voiceless palatal fricative

IPA - Unicode>

colspan="2"\|Sound sample
align="center" style="font-size: 24px"\|
IPA - image	align="center"\|
X-SAMPA	align="center"\|`C`
Kirshenbaum	align="center"\|`C`

The voiceless 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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is C. The symbol is the letter c with a cedilla, as used to spell French words like faade, although the sound represented by the letter in either French or English orthography is not a voiceless palatal fricative, but simply s, the voiceless alveolar fricative. Features of this consonant:

Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
Its place of articulation is palatal which means it is articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised against the hard 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 English

In some dialects of English, the sequence /hj/ is sometimes realized as the voiceless palatal fricative, via coalescence, a type of assimilation. For example, human ( might be realized as ). However, there are no minimal pairs for /hj/ and //, so the voiceless palatal fricative is not a separate phoneme in English.

In other languages

German

German has the voiceless palatal fricative as a phoneme, and it is denoted by "ch", as in ich (the pronoun I). The Germans call this sound ich-Laut. This is the sound represented by "ch" when it follows "e", "i", "", "", "", the diphthongs "eu" or "u", or the consonants "l", "n" or "r". The sound represented by "ch" following "a", "o", "u", or the diphthong "au" is a different consonant, the voiceless uvular fricative.

<< Previous

Word Browser

Next >>

voiced alveolar fricative
voiced alveolo palatal fricative
voiced bilabial fricative
voiced dental fricative
voiced dental plosive
voiced epiglottal fricative
voiced glottal fricative
voiced labiodental fricative
voiced palatal fricative
voiced palatal plosive
voiced pharyngeal fricative

voiced postalveolar fricative
voiced retroflex fricative
voiced retroflex plosive
voiced uvular fricative
voiced uvular plosive
voiced velar fricative
voiceless alveolar fricative
voiceless alveolo palatal fricative
voiceless bilabial fricative
voiceless dental fricative
voiceless epiglottal fricative

pulmonic egressive
voiceless glottal fricative
voiceless labial velar fricative
voiceless labiodental fricative
voiceless palatal plosive
voiceless pharyngeal fricative
voiceless postalveolar fricative
voiceless retroflex fricative
voiceless retroflex plosive
voiceless uvular fricative
the national

warioware, inc.: mega microgame$
cedric the entertainer
infancy gospel of thomas
frederick c. alderdice
voiced alveolar implosive
voiced palatal implosive
voiced bilabial implosive
voiced uvular implosive
voiced dental implosive
voiced velar implosive
bonington hall