Voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative
| IPA – text | ɕ |
| IPA – image | Missing image Xsampa-sslash.png Image:Xsampa-sslash.png |
| entity | ɕ |
| X-SAMPA | s\ |
| Kirshenbaum | |
| Missing image Loudspeaker.png Sound Sound sample? | |
|---|---|
The voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative or laminal postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɕ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is s\.
| Contents |
Features
Features of the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative:
- Its manner of articulation is sibilant fricative, which means it is produced by directing air flow through a groove in the tongue at the place of articulation and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.
- Its place of articulation is alveolo-palatal, that is, laminal postalveolar, which means it is articulated with the blade of the tongue between the alveolar ridge and the palate.
- Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
- It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
- It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
- The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.
In English
The voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative does not occur in English, and many English speakers have difficulty distinguishing it from ʃ or ç. This can be seen, for example, in the realization by some English speakers of German ich (Standard German [ɪç]) as [ɪʃ], possibly influenced by dialects of German where the pronunciation is [ɪɕ].
In other languages
Belarusian
German
In some dialects of German, particularly those spoken in the Rhineland, the sound Germans know as ich-Laut (in most dialects, a voiceless palatal fricative) is realized as [ɕ]. In those dialects, the voiced and voiceless alveolo-palatal fricatives are allophones. See German phonology.
Hungarian
Japanese
In Japanese, the voiceless alveolar fricative gets assimilated to the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative when it is followed by [i] or [j]: し (or シ) is pronounced [ɕi] instead of [si], and is therefore Romanized as shi instead of si.
Korean
Mandarin
The voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative occurs in Mandarin when followed by [i], [j], or [y], and is represented by x in pinyin. This sound is also found in combination with [t] in j and q.
Polish
See also