voiceless postalveolar affricate

The voiceless postalveolar affricate is a type of consonantal sound (a postalveolar consonant), used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is tS. Alternatives commonly used in linguistic works, particularly in older or American literature, are č and more rarely t. Historically, this sound often derives from a former voiceless velar plosive (k, as in English, Mandarin Chinese, and Romance languages) or voiceless dental plosive (t, as in Japanese) by way of palatalization, especially next to a front vowel. This sound is present as the following spellings in these languages:

tx in Basque
ch in English, Spanish, and Quich
tch in French
tj in Dutch
c followed by i or e in Italian and Romanian, as well as the church pronunciation of Latin
ч in Bulgarian and Russian
cz in Polish
in Turkish
č in Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, and Belarusian
چ in Persian and Urdu
ĉ in Esperanto
j (unaspirated) and ch (aspirated) in Chinese as transcribed in Pinyin
च (unaspirated) and छ (aspirated) in Sanskrit, Hindi, and other languages transcribed using Devanagari.
ㅈ (unaspirated) and ㅊ (aspirated) in Korean.

Voiceless Postalveolar Affricate

See also