Voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative
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 , and the equivalent
X-SAMPA symbol is
s\.
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 some dialects of
German, particularly those spoken in the
Rhineland, the sound known by Germans as
ich-Laut (in most dialects, a
voiceless palatal fricative) is realized as . In those dialects, the
voiced and voiceless alveolo-palatal fricatives are
allophones.
*In
Japanese, assimilates when it is followed by or and is pronounced instead of . It is Romanized as
shi, or less commonly,
si.
*In
Mandarin, the
Pinyin letter for is
x. This sound is also found in the
affricates
j and
q .
* is a contrastive
phoneme of Swedish and is realized as in almost all dialects except in
Finland-Swedish, where it is mostly affricated as and is used as an allophone of . Example: ; ; "skirt"
*In
Polish, , written
ś or
si, is a phoneme different from both (
s) and (
sz). The affricate (
ć respectively
ci) also occurs in Polish.
*In
Ormuri, , written
ݭ, contrasts with both (
س) and (
ش).
English
The voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative does not occur in
English, and many English speakers have difficulty distinguishing it from
or
[ç]. This can be seen, for example, in the realization by some English speakers of
German ich (Standard German ) as , possibly influenced by dialects of German where the pronunciation is . Some English speakers, especially Americans, realize /s/ in front of /t/ as or something similar, for example in
estimate.
*
List of phonetics topics
