Voiceless postalveolar affricate

The voiceless palato-alveolar fricative or domed postalveolar affricate is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English speakers as the "ch" sound in "child."

Historically, this sound often derives from a former voiceless velar plosive (k, as in English, and Romance languages), or a voiceless dental plosive by way of palatalization, especially next to a front vowel.

Transcription

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses two symbols together to represent this sound: . They may be joined with a tiebar (), and the may sometimes be given the "retracted" diacritic (). Formerly a ligature () was used. Other phonetic transcriptions used include:

c
č
ch
tc (older Americanist transcription)
tš

Features

Features of the voiceless domed 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 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

An aspirated and slightly labialized voiceless palato-alveolar affricate occurs in English, and it is the sound denoted by the digraph ch in chip, tch in witch, or t in nature.

In 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.

In other languages

Various types of postalveolar affricates are present with the following spellings in these languages. (Not all palato-alveolar.)

tx in Basque and Catalan
cs in Hungarian (see Hungarian cs)
ch in Spanish and Quiché
zh (unaspirated) and ch (aspirated) in Mandarin Pinyin (retroflex)
cz in Polish (retroflex)
ç in Turkish and Albanian
ċ in Maltese
č in Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Slovenian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and in Karelian, Northern Sami, Skolt Sami, and Inari Sami.
c followed by i or e in Italian and Romanian, as well as the church pronunciation of Latin
ч in Bulgarian, Belarusian, Macedonian, Serbian, Russian and Ukrainian
چ in Persian and Urdu
च (unaspirated) and छ (aspirated) in Sanskrit, Hindi, and other languages written in Devanagari
চ (unaspirated) and ছ (aspirated) in Bengali
ㅈ (unaspirated) and ㅊ (aspirated) in Korean
in Amharic
tch in loans in French
tsch in German
k(j), tj and sometimes also hj in Faroese
č or tš in loans Estonian
tš in foreign transcriptions in Finnish (unknown in Finnish itself)
ts in Tagalog, and, if in the weak grade, in the Kalevala transcription of Karelian Finnish, e.g. metsä – metsän ^*

Also, some constructed languages and alphabets include unusual orthographies, such as ĉ in Esperanto or something resembling ч in Klingon.

The following are often mistakenly thought to be this sound: Dutch tj; Mandarin j, q (in Pinyin); Russian ч; Japanese ち, and Thai จ, ฉ, ช, and ฌ. These are actually alveolo-palatal or, in the case of Dutch tj, prepalatal, in Russian it's palatalized. In Swedish, pronunciation of tj varies, but this affricate is interchangeable and does not contrast with tj, and is actually the standard pronunciation in some varieties of Finland-Swedish.

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Voiceless postalveolar affricate

Transcription

Features

In English

In Portuguese

In other languages

See also