Make the "tut-tut" disapproval sound.
Congratulations, you've just produced a dental click, a fully-fledged consonant in dozens of languages.
You just don't get to use it in words.
Logic Behind Linguistics: How a Click Becomes a Consonant
The mechanics are wild.
Every other consonant you produce rides on air from your lungs. Clicks don't. You seal the mouth in two places, drop the tongue to create suction, and release, the pop is powered entirely by the vacuum.
It's the only class of speech sound that works this way, and children learning click languages master them as routinely as English children master "th."
In Xhosa, the alphabet absorbed them.
South Africa's isiXhosa, spoken by around eight million people, one of the country's official languages.
It writes its three basic clicks with letters English wasn't using properly anyway: c for the dental click (the tut-tut), x for the lateral click (the horse-encouraging cluck), q for the sharp palatal pop.
The language's own name, Xhosa, starts with a click.
And clicks rarely escaped Africa
The one famous exception is Damin, a ceremonial register once used by initiated Lardil men on Mornington Island, Australia, and the only known click system ever developed outside the African continent.
It was an invented sacred vocabulary of a few hundred words, taught during initiation, and it died with the last initiates in the 20th century. One continent's everyday consonant was another's holy secret.
Fun Facts Worth Sharing
Miriam Makeba took a click language to the world's biggest stages: her 1960s hit "Qongqothwane".
It is known internationally as "The Click Song" because foreign audiences couldn't pronounce the title; it is a traditional Xhosa wedding song, clicks and all. Sixty years on, it's still most people's first meeting with a click consonant.
Join the Conversation
Can you do all three Xhosa clicks — c, x, q? (Be honest. The lateral one gets everyone.) Share your attempts with our community on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn.
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