Tahtlikud

Tahtlikud, Estonian for consonants, are the class of speech sounds produced with some degree of constriction or closure in the vocal tract. They are distinguished from vowels, which are formed with a relatively open and uninterrupted airflow. Tahtlikud are typically described by three main features: place of articulation (where the constriction occurs), manner of articulation (how the constriction is produced), and voicing (whether the vocal cords vibrate).

Common categories of tahlikud include stops/plosives (short, complete closures), fricatives (narrow constrictions with continuous turbulence), nasals (air released through the nose), liquids (approximate contact with the tract) and glides (very close to vowels in articulation). They can be voiced or voiceless, and many languages exhibit some degree of aspiration or other fine-grained articulatory differences. Consonant sounds also participate in syllable structure and phonotactics, often appearing in clusters at syllable onsets or codas depending on the language.

In Estonian phonology, tahlikud are notable for features such as consonant gradation, a morphophonemic alternation where stem consonants change between strong and weak grades across inflectional forms. This phenomenon affects how words change shape in different grammatical contexts and is a defining characteristic of Estonian sound patterns.

Orthography and pronunciation interact closely for tahlikud. In writing, vowel length is marked explicitly, while consonant length is also phonemic in Estonian. Double consonants in spelling often signal a longer consonant articulation in syllables where length contrasts are contrastive, influencing both pronunciation and meaning.

Overall, tahlikud are essential to the structure and rhythm of Estonian, shaping word formation, pronunciation, and written form.