Place of articulation

In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator (typically some part of the tongue), and a passive location (typically some part of the roof of the mouth). Along with the manner of articulation and the phonation, this gives the consonant its distinctive sound.

The terminology in this article has been developed to precisely describe all the consonants in all the world's spoken languages. No known language distinguishes all of the places described here, so less precision is needed to distinguish the sounds of a particular language.