Affricate consonant
Affricate consonants begin as
stops (most often an
alveolar, such as or ), but release as a
fricative such as or (or, in a couple of languages, into a fricative
trill) rather than directly into the following vowel.
The
English sounds spelled "ch" and "j" (transcribed and in
IPA),
German and
Italian z and
Italian z are typical affricates. These sounds are fairly common in the world's languages, as are other affricates with similar sounds, such as those in
Polish and
Chinese. However, other than , voiced affricates are relatively uncommon. For several places of articulation they aren't attested at all.
Much less common are e.g.
labiodental affricates, such as in German, or
velar affricates, such as in
Tswana (written
kg) or High Alemannic
Swiss German dialects (depending on the dialect also uvular ). Worldwide, only a few languages have affricates in these positions, even though the corresponding
stop consonants are virtually universal. Also less common are alveolar affricates where the fricative is
lateral, such as the sound found in
Nahuatl and
Totonac. Many
Athabaskan languages (such as
Dene Suline and
Navajo) have series of coronal affricates which may be unaspirated, aspirated, or ejective in addition to being interdental/dental, alveolar, postalveolar, or lateral, i.e. , , , , , , , , , , , and . Affricates may also be contrasted by palatalization, as in the
Erzya language, where voiceless alveolar, postalveolar and palatal affricates are contrasted. Affricates may also have phonemic length, that is, affected by a
chroneme, as in
Karelian.
Affricates are often represented by the two sounds they consist of (e.g. , ). However, single signs for the affricates may be desirable, in order to stress that they function as unitary speech segments (i.e. as
phonemes). In this case, the IPA recommends joining the two elements of the affricate by a tie bar (e.g. , ). Ligatures are available in
Unicode for the six common affricates , , , , , and .
Another method is to indicate the release of the affricate with a superscript: , . This is derived from the IPA convention of indicating other releases with a superscript.
In other phonetic transcription systems, such as the
Americanist system, the affricates , , , , , and are represented as or ; , , or (older) ; or ; , , or (older) ; ; and or respectively. Within the IPA, and are sometimes transcribed as palatal stops, and .
Affricates can contrast with stop-fricative sequences. Examples include:: Polish: in
czysta 'clean
(f.)' vs. in
trzysta 'three hundred', and:
Klallam: in 'look at me' vs. in 'he looks at it'.
The difference is that in the stop-fricative sequence, the stop has a release of its own before the fricative starts, but in the affricate, the fricative element
is the release. Stop-fricative sequences may have a
syllable boundary between the two segments.
Affricates and stop-fricative sequences are also distinguished phonemically. In English, and (as in
nuts and
nods) are considered to be sequences of a stop phoneme and a fricative phoneme even though they are phonetically affricates, because they may have a
morpheme boundary in them (e.g.
nuts is
nut +
s). The real English affricate phonemes and cannot have a morpheme boundary, and in order to show that they are not sequences of phonemes, Some notation systems use <č> and <ǰ> to represent these two affricates, but this is not considered standard IPA notation.
In the case of coronals, the symbols are normally used for the stop portion of the affricate regardless of place. For example, is commonly seen for . For legibility, the tie bars have been removed from the table entries.
The exemplar languages are ones that these sounds have been reported from, but in several cases they may need confirmation.
Sibilant affricates
*
Voiceless alveolar affricate (in
Italian,
German)
*
Voiced alveolar affricate (in Italian,
Pashto )
*
Voiceless postalveolar affricate (in
English, usually spelled "ch")
*
Voiced postalveolar affricate (English "j" or "soft g")
*
Voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate (in
Polish,
Mandarin)
*
Voiced alveolo-palatal affricate (in Polish,
Serbian )
*
Voiceless retroflex affricate (in
Ubykh and other Northwest Caucasian languages)
*
Voiced retroflex affricate (in Ubykh and other Northwest Caucasian languages)
Non-sibilant affricates
*
Voiceless bilabial affricate (
needs confirmation)
*
Voiceless bilabial-labiodental affricate (in
German,
Teke)
*
Voiced bilabial-labiodental affricate (in Teke) (
needs confirmation)
*
Voiceless labiodental affricate (in XiNkuna
Tsonga)
*
Voiced labiodental affricate (in XiNkuna Tsonga)
*
Voiceless dental affricate (in
Luo,
Dene Suline)
*
Voiced dental affricate (in Dene Suline)
*
Voiceless alveolar nonsibilant affricate (in
Mapudungun) (
needs confirmation)
*
Voiceless palatal affricate (in
Hungarian)
*
Voiced palatal affricate (in Hungarian)
*
Voiceless velar affricate (in
Setswana,
High Alemannic German)
*
Voiceless uvular affricate (in
Nez Percé,
Wolof,
Kabardian)
Lateral affricates
*
Voiceless alveolar lateral affricate (in
Navaho, etc.)
*
Voiced alveolar lateral affricate (not reported to ever contrast with )
*
Voiceless palatal lateral affricate (as ejective in
Dahalo; as in
Hadza)
*
Voiceless velar lateral affricate (as ejective in
Zulu)
Trilled affricates
*
Prenasalized trilled bilabial affricate (in
Kele)
*
Voiceless dental bilabially trilled affricate (in
Wari')
*
Voiceless alveolar trilled affricate (in
Ngkoth)
*
Voiceless retroflex trilled affricate (in
Malagasy) (
needs confirmation; a similar sound in the southern dialect of
Mapudungun is reported to vary with .)
*
Voiced retroflex trilled affricate (in Malagasy) (
needs confirmation; a similar sound in
Fijian is a prenasalized postalveolar stop that seldom has a trilled release)
The more common of the voiceless affricates are all attested as
ejectives as well: . Several Khoisan languages such as
!Xóõ are reported to have voiced ejective affricates, but these are actually consonant clusters: . Affricates are also commonly
aspirated: , and occasionally
murmured: .
Labialized,
palatalized,
velarized, and
pharyngealized affricates also occur.
*
List of phonetic topics
