Intervocalic consonant
In phonetics and phonology, an intervocalic consonant is a consonant that occurs between two vowels. Intervocalic consonants are often associated with lenition, a phonetic process that causes consonants to weaken and eventually disappear entirely. An example of such a change in English is intervocalic alveolar flapping, a process that, impressionistically speaking, turns t into d, causing metal and batter to sound like medal and badder, respectively. In North American English the weakening is variable across word boundaries, so that the /t/ of "see you tomorrow" may be pronounced with either tap or. Some languages have intervocalic weakening processes fully active word-internally and in connected discourse: e.g. Spanish /d/ regularly pronounced in both todo "all" and la duna "the dune".
