CLICK

in phonetics, a suction sound made in the mouth. Click sounds occur in a number of African languages and are often used as interjections in other languagese.g., the sound of disapproval represented in English by tsk, tsk. That sound is an example of a dental click; to make it, the back of the tongue contacts the soft palate and the sides and tip of the tongue touch the teeth. The click noise occurs when the tip of the tongue is lowered. Other click sounds differ in the positions of the tip and blade of the tongue and in the manner of the release of air into the mouth cavity. Clicks are a regular part of the consonant system in the Nguni languages of southern Africa, which include Zulu and Xhosa; these languages have dental clicks as described above, lateral clicks (like the clucking sound made to horses), and alveolar clicks, in which the tip of the tongue is on the ridge behind the upper teeth. There are as many as 15 contrasting click sounds in some Nguni languages. The Khoisan languages of the Bushmen and the Hottentots have even more basic types of clicks than the Nguni languages, distinguishing not only dental, lateral, and alveolar clicks but also postalveolar and, in some dialects, bilabial clicks; the latter is the sound of a kiss.