The voiceless alveolar affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is (previously ), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ts. The voiceless alveolar affricate occurs in such languages as German, Esperanto, Russian, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, among many others.

Features

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Features of the voiceless alveolar 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 alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
• 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 center 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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This sound occurs in English as the 'ts' sound found in the word pizza (^* or //).

Other languages

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Albanian

This sound is represented by "c."

Armenian

There are two voiceless alveolar affricate sounds in Armenian—one aspirated, one ejective. The sounds are represented by Ց and Ծ respecively.

Esperanto

This sound is found in the Esperanto letter c, as in the word ceceo ('tsetse fly').

Georgian

Georgian, like Armenian, contrasts ejective and aspirate affricates (წ and ც respectively).

German

In German, the sound is represented by the letter z, as in zehn ('ten'), by the digraph tz, as in Schnitzel, or by the letter c followed by any vowel but a, o or u, as in Cäsar ('Caesar').

Hungarian

In Hungarian, the sound is written c, as in cica ('kitten').

Italian

In Italian, the sound is represented by the letter z, single or double, as in pizza (^*). Note that italian z may also represent a voiced alveolar affricate.

Romanian

In Romanian, the sound is written using the letter , a T with a small comma below. As this character is still not widely supported in computer environments it is often replaced by T with a sedilla: Ţ, ţ.

The sound sometimes pairs with its plosive counterpart in certain morphological processes, such as plural formation of nouns and adjectives, verb conjugation: frate - fraţi (brother - brothers), drept - drepţi (straight, singular - plural), caut - cauţi (I search - you search).

Slavic languages

In most Slavic languages, the sound is represented by the Latin letter c, as in Polish cebula (onion) or Cyrillic ц, as in Russian революция ('revolution').

Modern Hebrew

In modern Hebrew, this sound is represented by the letter צ. This is but a modern development - originally, the letter represented the sound , like the rest of the Semitic languages.

Telugu

In old and modern Telugu, the letter 'c' is pronounced as alveolar affricate when followed by a non-frontal vowel. This sound is not found in other Dravidian languages.

Neznělá alveolární afrikáta | Consonne affriquée alvéolaire sourde | Consoană africată alveolară surdă