The voiced palato-alveolar fricative or domed postalveolar affricate 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 ^*. Alternatives commonly used in linguistic works, particularly in older or American literature, are . It is familiar to English speakers as the 'j' sound in jump.

Features

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Features of the voiced 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 voiced, which means it is produced while vibrating 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

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The voiced postalveolar affricate occurs in English, and it is the sound denoted by the letter 'g' in giraffe and the letter 'j' in jump.

In other languages

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Albanian

The xh digraph is used to write this sound.

Croatian

In Croatian it is a phoneme represented by the letter dž which is a "double" letter along with lj and nj.

Czech

In Czech, this sound is represented by digraph dž. It occurs almost in words of foreign origin (e. g. džem , jam). It is also a voiced realisation of č before voiced consonants, e. g. léčba , treatment.

Faroese

In Faroese, this sound is represented by dj, or by g + e, i, y, or ey. However, some scholars believe this sound to be a voiced palatal plosive, but this might just be dialectically dependant.

French

As J is already represents a voiced postalveolar fricative in French, a voiced postalveolar affricate in French is represented by dj as in Djibouti.

Scots Gaelic and Irish

In Irish and Scottish Gaelic (most notably in Scottish Gaelic), a slender d (slender meaning placed beside an e or an i) takes on this sound; Dia (Irish and Scots Gaelic) "God", Oíche Mhic Dé (Irish) "Night of God's Son", deas (Scots Gaelic) "ready".

Hungarian

In Hungarian, this sound is represented by the only trigraph of the language, dzs.

Italian

In Italian, this sound is represented by g before i or e, such as in giallo (//), yellow, or in gemma (//), gem.

Portuguese

In Brazilian Portuguese, the phoneme has the allophone before (spelled as i or unstressed e). A similar change converts into in the same environment.

See also

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• List of phonetics topics

Affricates

Znělá postalveolární afrikáta | Consonne affriquée post-alvéolaire voisée | Consoană africată postalveolară sonoră