This letter represents the unaspirated consonant [T]. It is a retroflex consonant, made by curling the tip of the tongue back a little bit as you would to make an American English "r" sound, but making contact with tongue tip and the roof of the mouth towards the front of the domed portion. It is an unaspirated sound, pronounced softly and without a puff of breathy aspiration.
It is the sound in Sindhi that is used to represent an American English "t" sound in borrowed words, such as [Tiicharu] 'teacher'.
In some Sindhi dialects, when this sound occurs at the end of a word it is pronounced in combination with an "r" sound immediately following, as in [puTru] 'son'. |