Flap Consonant - Tap Vs. Flap

Tap Vs. Flap

Many linguists use the terms tap and flap indiscriminately. Peter Ladefoged proposed for a while that it might be useful to distinguish between them. However, his usage was inconsistent, contradicting itself even between different editions of the same text. One proposed version of the distinction was that a tap strikes its point of contact directly, as a very brief stop, whereas a flap strikes the point of contact tangentially: "Flaps are most typically made by retracting the tongue tip behind the alveolar ridge and moving it forward so that it strikes the ridge in passing." Later, however, he no longer felt this to be a useful distinction, and preferred the term flap in all cases. For linguists that do make the distinction, the alveolar tap is transcribed as a fish-hook ar, while the flap is transcribed as a small capital dee, which is not recognized by the IPA. Otherwise alveolars are typically called taps, and other articulations flaps. No language is known to contrast a tap and a flap at the same place of articulation.