Intervocalic consonant

Inphoneticsandphonology,anintervocalic consonantis aconsonantthat occurs between twovowels.Intervocalic consonants are often associated withlenition,a phonetic process that causes consonants to weaken and eventually disappear entirely.An example of such a change inEnglishisintervocalic alveolar flapping,a process (especially inNorth AmericanandAustralian English) that, impressionistically speaking, replaces /t/ with /d/. For example, "metal"is pronounced[mɛɾl];"batter"sounds like['bæ.ɾɚ].(More precisely, both /t/ and /d/ are pronounced as thealveolar tap[ɾ].) In North American English, the weakening is variable across word boundaries, such that the /t/ of "see youtomorrow "might be pronounced as either[ɾ]or[tʰ].Some languages have intervocalic-weakening processes fully active word-internally and in connected discourse. For example, inSpanish,/d/ is regularly pronounced like[ð]in the words "todo"[ˈtoðo](meaning "all" ) and "la duna[laˈðuna]",meaning" the dune "(but[ˈduna]if the word is pronounced alone).