Voiceless postalveolar affricate
The
voiceless palato-alveolar fricative or
domed postalveolar affricate is a type of
consonantal sound used in some
spoken languages. It is familiar to English speakers as the "ch" sound in "child."
Historically, this sound often derives from a former
voiceless velar plosive (k, as in
English, and
Romance languages), or a
voiceless dental plosive by way of palatalization, especially next to a
front vowel.
The
International Phonetic Alphabet uses two symbols together to represent this sound: . They may be joined with a tiebar (), and the may sometimes be given the "retracted" diacritic (). Formerly a
ligature () was used. Other
phonetic transcriptions used include:
*
c*
č*
ch*
tc (older
Americanist transcription)
*
tšFeatures of the voiceless domed postalveolar affricate:
* Its
manner of articulation is
sibilant affricate, which means it is produced by first stopping the airflow entirely, then directing it through a groove in the tongue and over the sharp edge of the teeth, causing high-frequency
turbulence.
* Its
place of articulation is
palato-alveolar, that is, domed (partially
palatalized)
postalveolar, which means it is articulated with the front of the
tongue behind the
alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue bunched up ("domed") at 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.
An
aspirated and slightly
labialized voiceless palato-alveolar affricate occurs in
English, and it is the sound denoted by the
digraph ch in
chip,
tch in witch, or
t in nature.
In
Brazilian Portuguese, the phoneme
has the allophone before
(spelled as
i or unstressed
e). A similar change converts
into in the same environment.
Various types of postalveolar affricates are present with the following spellings in these languages. (Not all palato-alveolar.)
*
tx in
Basque and
Catalan*
cs in
Hungarian (see
Hungarian cs)
*
ch in
Spanish and
Quiché*
zh (
unaspirated) and
ch (
aspirated) in
Mandarin Pinyin (
retroflex)
*
cz in
Polish (
retroflex)
*
ç in
Turkish and
Albanian*
ċ in
Maltese*
č in
Czech,
Slovak,
Croatian,
Slovenian,
Lithuanian,
Latvian, and in
Karelian,
Northern Sami,
Skolt Sami, and
Inari Sami.
*
c followed by i or e in
Italian and
Romanian, as well as the church pronunciation of
Latin*
ч in
Bulgarian,
Belarusian,
Macedonian,
Serbian,
Russian and
Ukrainian *
چ in
Persian and
Urdu*
च (unaspirated) and
छ (aspirated) in
Sanskrit,
Hindi, and other languages written in
Devanagari*
চ (unaspirated) and
ছ (aspirated) in
Bengali*
ㅈ (unaspirated) and
ㅊ (aspirated) in
Korean*
in
Amharic*
tch in loans in
French*
tsch in
German*
k(j),
tj and sometimes also
hj in
Faroese*
č or
tš in loans
Estonian*
tš in foreign transcriptions in
Finnish (unknown in Finnish itself)
*
ts in
Tagalog, and, if in the
weak grade, in the
Kalevala transcription of Karelian Finnish, e.g.
metsä [met.ːsæ] –
metsän [me.ʧæn]. [
1]
Also, some constructed languages and alphabets include unusual orthographies, such as
ĉ in
Esperanto or something resembling
ч in
Klingon.
The following are often mistakenly thought to be this sound:
Dutch tj;
Mandarin j,
q (in
Pinyin);
Russian ч;
Japanese ち, and
Thai จ,
ฉ,
ช, and
ฌ. These are actually
alveolo-palatal or, in the case of Dutch
tj,
prepalatal, in Russian it's palatalized. In
Swedish, pronunciation of
tj varies, but this affricate is interchangeable and does not contrast with
tj, and is actually the standard pronunciation in some varieties of
Finland-Swedish.
*
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