help identifying/naming a sound?

[scorpryan]

So I was toying around with a new phonology, one which I intend to have sound very non-human, and I wanted to include this certain sound... I just can't tell what it is. I was going to upload an audio file but my voice recording is very quiet, so it is too hard to hear that way. The closest approximation I can find is a dental click [ǀ]. The thing is, that comes out sounding like a [t] turned into a click... but the sound I am talking about is more akin to [θ] a voiceless dental fricative. It has a "fricative" sound if that makes sense given that it is a click...? The difference between the way the tongue is positioned is significant compared to the standard dental click. The tongue is not where the gums and front upper teeth meet... it is pretty much completely on the teeth, but it does not pass them quite as dramatically as in [θ]. As far as I can tell, it just *barely* sticks out to touch the bottom of front teeth, like just a tiny bit of the tip of the tongue. The front of the tongue sort of bends its upward in the middle of itself so that the very front of the tongue is pressed against the back of the teeth (not the gums, just the teeth) and the very slightest bit of the tip protrudes beneath the bottom of the teeth. It is not an ejective [θ'], it is definitely a click. It is definitely not just a plain dental click.

Help? (Sorry, I am way too ignorant to describe this any better).

Edit: I only have one more idea, and that is that I am getting clicks and *strong* ejectives confused somehow, in which case this would be a "strong" (!) dental ejective [θ!] which I am not sure is correct nor is it common practice anymore to denote, since "strong" and "weak" ejectives are not phonemic. And I really don't think this is it... since there's a real "click" sound going on there and the airstream is foreceful for a millisecond then completely cut off.

[scorpryan]

** also, I think it is ingressive.

[spanick]

Voiceless interdental click, I suppose.

[Xephyr]

Might be an egressive click. But without sound recordings or a better articulatory description we can't say.

[scorpryan]

https://clyp.it/1r1nxqiw

I think this worked

[scorpryan]

Still sounds super quiet though, not sure if you can hear the quality of the sound. Let me know

[Vardelm]

I'll go with "voiceless retroflex interdental click".

If it doesn't contrast with a dental click, I would just call it that and explain how your speakers tend to pronounce it. There's hardly any difference compared to a regular dental click, at least to my ear.

[scorpryan]

Thank you both!

[Travis B.]

Umm how do you have a retroflex interdental consonant?

[Xephyr]

That sound sample doesn't sound at all like a (normal) dental click to me. Like I said earlier, it might be an egressive click, or it might be ejective-- v. hard to tell from a recording.

[Vlürch]

Like others said, it's hard to tell from a recording especially since the recording doesn't have any other sounds to compare it to as the mic's quality has a huge impact on how sounds get picked up, but after trying to do the same sound myself a few times and listening to your recording, I think it could be something like [t̪͡ʪʼ]?

[Tropylium]

Sounds like a non-sibilant dental click to me, i.e. the click equivalent of [t̪θ].

It's not often recognized, but it's possible to distinguish clicks by both POA and MOA; the "standard" clicks [ʘ ǀ ǁ ǃ ǃǃ ǂ] are the equivalents of [p t̪s̪ tɬ t ʈ cç], but there are other options just as well (e.g. [pɸ f s ʈʂ c]).

[Vardelm]

Umm how do you have a retroflex interdental consonant?

Whoops. I should have put a smiley after that line as it was intended to be (mostly) tongue-in-cheek. Since the tongue is perhaps curled a bit more than a regular dental click, that reminded me of retroflex consonants, but of course retroflex wouldn't apply here.

2nd line about calling it a dental click but just adding description still stands.

[vokzhen]

When I try and make a sound like the OP describes, it seems like the interdental part may be incidental. I can't get it quite as they describe, there's laminal-alveolar or laminal-postdental contact that seems to be making the majority of the sound, as it makes for a drawn-out, noisy release. There's also air rushing in between the front teeth at the start of the release that adds some noise thanks to the interdental contact.