The voiced postalveolar or palato-alveolar fricative is a type of

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

al sound used in some spoken

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

s. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiced postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describes the voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative , for which there are significant perceptual differences, as one is a

sibilant Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English w ...

and one is not.

Voiced palato-alveolar fricative

The voiced palato-alveolar fricative or voiced domed postalveolar fricative is a type of

al sound, used in some spoken

Transcription

The symbol in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

that represents this sound is the lower case form of the letter Ezh (), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is Z. An alternative symbol used in some older and American linguistic literature is , a ''z'' with a

caron A caron or háček ( ), is a diacritic mark () placed over certain letters in the orthography of some languages, to indicate a change of the related letter's pronunciation. Typographers tend to use the term ''caron'', while linguists prefer ...

. In some transcriptions of alphabets such as the

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

, the sound is represented by the digraph . Palatoalveolar fricative

Although present in English, the sound is not represented by a specific letter or digraph, but is formed by yod-coalescence of and in words such as measure. It also appears in some loanwords, mainly from French (thus written with and ). It occurs as a borrowed phoneme in a number of languages under the influence of French, Persian or Slavic languages, as in the Germanic languages (Dutch, English, German and

Luxembourgish Luxembourgish ( ; also ''Luxemburgish'', ''Luxembourgian'', ''Letzebu(e)rgesch''; ) is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 400,000 people speak Luxembourgish worldwide. The language is standardized and officiall ...

), the Romance languages (Italian, and Romanian), the Turkic languages (Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Turkish, and Uyghur), and the Uralic languages (Estonian and Hungarian), Breton and Maltese. The phoneme has the lowest consonant frequency in both English and Persian. The sound occurs in many languages and, as in English and French, may have simultaneous lip rounding (), although this is rarely indicated in transcription.

Features

Features of the voiced palato-alveolar fricative:

Occurrence

The sound in Russian denoted by is commonly transcribed as a palato-alveolar fricative but is actually a laminal retroflex fricative.

Voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative

The voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative is a consonantal sound. As the

does not have separate symbols for the post-alveolar consonants (the same symbol is used for all coronal places of articulation that are not palatalized), this sound is usually transcribed ( retracted constricted ). The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r\_-_r.

Features

However, it does not have the grooved tongue and directed airflow, or the high frequencies, of a sibilant. * Its

place of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is an approximate location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a pa ...

postalveolar Postalveolar (post-alveolar) consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but n ...

, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge.

Occurrence

Notes

References

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

External links

* {{IPA navigation Postalveolar consonants Fricative consonants Pulmonic consonants Voiced oral consonants Central consonants Labial–coronal consonants

Voiced palato-alveolar fricative

Transcription

Features

Occurrence

Voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative

Features

Occurrence

See also

Notes

References

External links