Apical consonant

Okay kiddo, have you ever heard of consonants? They are sounds in language that we make with our mouths by stopping or restricting the flow of air. Now, some consonants are made by closing our lips (like "b" or "p"), some are made by touching our teeth (like "t" or "d"), and some are made by moving our tongue to the roof of our mouth (like "k" or "g").

Now, an apical consonant is a special type of consonant that is made with the tip of our tongue. When we say "t" or "d", for example, we touch the tip of our tongue to the alveolar ridge - that bumpy part just behind our top teeth. That's where the word "apical" comes from - it means "at the tip".

There are other apical consonants too, like "s" and "z", where we make a hissing sound by squeezing air through a small space between our tongue and the roof of our mouth. And in some languages, there are even apical consonants that are made by curling the tip of the tongue back towards the throat (like the "rolled r" sound in Spanish).

So, to sum it up, an apical consonant is a type of consonant that we make with the tip of our tongue by touching it to different parts of our mouth. Cool, huh?