Voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative

From Freepedia

IPA – number	182
IPA – text	ɕ
IPA – image	Image:Xsampa-sslash.png
entity	ɕ
X-SAMPA	s\
Kirshenbaum	S;
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 1 Features 2 In English 3 In other languages 3.1 German 3.2 Japanese 3.3 Mandarin 3.4 Swedish 3.5 Polish 4 See also

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, palatalized laminal postalveolar, which means it is articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward 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].

Some English speakers, especially Americans, realize /s/ in front of /t/ as [ɕ] or something similar, for example in estimate.

In other languages

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.

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 usually Romanized as shi instead of si.

Mandarin

The sound represented by x in the Pinyin transcription is perhaps best interpreted as [ç͡ɕ] with a [j]-like offglide. It can also be found in Pinyin q, which is an aspirated affricate that begins with [c].

Swedish

(Image:Loudspeaker.png kjol; [ɕu:l]; "skirt") – /ɕ/ is a contrastive phoneme of Swedish and is realized as [ɕ] in almost all dialects except in Finland-Swedish, where it is mostly affricated as [ʨ] and [ɕ] is used as an allophone of /ɧ/.

Polish

In Polish, [ɕ], written ś or si, is a phoneme different from both [s] (s) and [s̠] (sz). The affricate [t͡ɕ] (ć respectively ci) also occurs in Polish.

See also

• List of phonetics topics

Consonants (List, table)	See also: IPA, Vowels
Pulmonics Bilabial Lab'den. Dental Alveolar Postalv. Retroflex Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyn. Epiglottal Glottal   Non-pulmonics and other symbols Plosives p b t d ʈ ɖ c ɟ k ɡ q ɢ ʡ ʔ  Clicks  ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ Nasals m ɱ n ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ  Implo­sives  ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ Trills ʙ r • ʀ •  Ejec­tives  pʼ tʼ kʼ qʼ sʼ Flaps & Taps • • ɾ ɽ • Other laterals  ɺ ɫ Fricatives ɸ β f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ ʂ ʐ ç ʝ x ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ h ɦ Co-articulated approximants  ʍ w ɥ Lat. Fricatives ɬ ɮ • • • Other fricatives  ɕ ʑ ɧ    Approximants    β̞ ʋ ɹ ɻ j ɰ Affricates  ʦ ʣ ʧ ʤ Lat. Appr'mants l ɭ ʎ ʟ Co-articulated stops  kp ɡb ŋm
This page contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help] Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant. Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged impossible.