The voiceless alveolo-palatal 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\.
Features
Features of the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative:
The voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative does not occur in English, and many English speakers have difficulty distinguishing it from ʃ or ç.
In other languages
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.
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.
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.
See also
Last updated: 10-19-2005 20:25:31
