View example sentences, synonyms and word forms for Retroflex.
Retroflex
Retroflex meaning
Bent or curved backwards. | Of pronunciation in which the tip of the tongue is raised and bent backwards, so that the underside of the tongue approaches or touches the palate. | Of pronunciation in which the tip of the tongue approaches or touches the back of the alveolar ridge.
Example sentences (15)
Notably, the Tamil retroflex series includes the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ ( ழ main) (example Tamil; often transcribed 'zh'), which is absent in the Indo-Aryan languages.
Both the long ā and retroflex ḷ are seen in the ISO 15919 ALA-LC rendering, Pāḷi; however, to this day there is no single, standard spelling of the term, and all four possible spellings can be found in textbooks.
Dublin's retroflex approximant has no precedent outside of northern Ireland and is a genuine innovation of the past two decades.
However, words which historically contain these two phonemes are still often written with the graphemes representing the retroflex sounds.
If there is ambiguity, additional terms have been invented, so subapical–palatal is more commonly called "retroflex".
In most languages, the retroflex and palatal releases are "abrupt"; that is, they are sharp popping sounds with little frication (turbulent airflow).
It is often transliterated as 'th' to distinguish it from another letter, ட, which is a retroflex 't' or 'd'.
Some ad hoc letters have appeared in the literature for the retroflex lateral flap, the voiceless lateral fricatives, the epiglottal trill, and the labiodental plosives.
Some Indigenous Australian languages contrast dental, alveolar, retroflex, and palatal laterals, and many Native American languages have lateral fricatives and affricates as well.
The approximant /ɻ/ has both rhotic and lateral qualities, and is indeterminate between an approximant and a fricative, but is laminal post-alveolar rather than a true retroflex.
The combination of an aspirated voiceless alveolar plosive /tʰ/ and a voiced retroflex plosive /ɖ/ is particularly unusual.
These caused the original introduction of the retroflex sounds /ʂ/ and /ʈ/ (modern s, tr) into the language.
The similarity of apicoalveolar /s̺/ to the Vietnamese retroflex /ʂ/ led to the assignment of s and x as above.
They typically include dental, alveolar, retroflex and palatal laterals, and as many as three rhotics.
While the retroflex stops are mapped to 't, T, d, D, N', the dentals are mapped to 'w, W, x, X, n'.