Editing Assamese language (section)

===Alveolar stops===
The Assamese [[phoneme]] inventory is unique in the group of [[Indo-Aryan languages]] as it lacks a dental-retroflex distinction among the [[Coronal consonant|coronal]] stops as well as the lack of postalveolar affricates and fricatives.<ref>"Assamese, alone among NIA languages except for [[Romani language|Romany]], has also lost the characteristic IA dental/retroflex contrast (although it is retained in spelling), reducing the number of articulations, with the loss also of {{IPA|/c/}}, to three." {{harv|Masica|1993|p=95}}</ref> Historically, the [[Dental consonant|dental]] and [[retroflex consonant|retroflex]] series merged into [[Alveolar plosive|alveolar stops]]. This makes Assamese resemble non-Indic languages of [[Northeast India]] (such as [[Austroasiatic languages|Austroasiatic]] and [[Sino-Tibetan languages]]).{{Sfn|Moral|1997|p=45}} The only other language to have fronted retroflex stops into alveolars is the closely related group of eastern [[dialects]] of [[Bengali language|Bengali]] (although a contrast with dental stops remains in those dialects). {{IPAslink|r}} is normally realised as {{IPAblink|ɹ}} or {{IPAblink|ɻ}}.