Intervocalic consonant

{{Short description|Consonant that occurs between two vowels}}

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In phonetics and phonology, an intervocalic consonant is a consonant that occurs between two vowels.{{cite book |last1=Nathan |first1=Geoffrey S. |title=Phonology: A cognitive grammar introduction |date=2008 |publisher=John Benjamins |location=Amsterdam/Philadelphia |isbn=978-90-272-1907-7 |url=https://benjamins.com/catalog/clip.3 |language=English}}{{rp|158}} Intervocalic consonants are often associated with lenition, a phonetic process that causes consonants to weaken and eventually disappear entirely.{{cn|date=February 2024}} An example of such a change in English is intervocalic alveolar flapping, a process (especially in North American and Australian English) that, impressionistically speaking, replaces /t/ with /d/. For example, "metal" is pronounced {{IPA|[mɛɾl]}}; "batter" sounds like {{IPA|['bæ.ɾɚ]}}. (More precisely, both /t/ and /d/ are pronounced as the alveolar tap {{IPA|[ɾ]}}.) In North American English, the weakening is variable across word boundaries, such that the /t/ of "see you tomorrow" might be pronounced as either {{IPA|[ɾ]}} or {{IPA|[tʰ]}}.{{rp|96}} Some languages have intervocalic-weakening processes fully active word-internally and in connected discourse. For example, in Spanish, /d/ is regularly pronounced like {{IPA|[ð]}} in the words "{{lang|es|todo}}" {{IPA|[ˈtoðo]}} (meaning "all") and "{{lang|es|la duna}} {{IPA|[laˈðuna]}}", meaning "the dune" (but {{IPA|[ˈduna]}} if the word is pronounced alone).{{cn|date=February 2024}}