A voiced postalveolar or palato-alveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to many if not most English-speakers as the "s" sound in "fusion".
The International Phonetic Association uses the phrase voiced postalveolar fricative for the sibilant sound #Voiced palato-alveolar fricative|, though technically it also describes the voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative , for which there are significant perceptual differences.
Voiced palato-alveolar fricative
A voiced palato-alveolar fricative or voiced domed postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages.
thumb|upright=0.6|class=skin-invert-image|[[Sagittal section of a voiced palato-alveolar fricative]]
Transcription
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is the lower case form of the letter Ezh (). An alternative symbol used in some older and American linguistic literature is , a z with a caron. In some transcriptions of alphabets such as the Cyrillic, the sound is represented by the digraph .
Although present in English, the sound is not represented by a specific letter or digraph, but is formed by yod-coalescence of and in words such as measure. It also appears in some loanwords, mainly from French (thus written with and ).
occurs as a borrowed phoneme in a number of languages under the influence of French, Persian or Slavic languages, as in the Germanic languages (Dutch, English, German and Luxembourgish), the Romance languages (Italian and Romanian), the Turkic languages (Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Turkish, and Uyghur), and the Uralic languages (Estonian and Hungarian), Breton and Maltese. The phoneme has the lowest consonant frequency in both English and Persian.
In English and French, may have simultaneous lip rounding (), although this is rarely indicated in transcription.
Features
Features of a voiced palato-alveolar fricative:
Occurrence
{| class="wikitable"
!colspan=2| Language !! Word !! IPA!! Meaning !! Notes
|-
|colspan=2| Adyghe || || || 'beard'||
|-
|colspan=2| Albanian|| || || 'noise'||
|-
| rowspan="3" |Arabic
|Levantine
|
|
|'crazy'
|
|-
|Maghrebi || || ||'husband'||
|-
|Hejazi
|
|
|'ready'
|An allophone of used by a number of speakers.
|-
| Armenian||Eastern|| || ||'hour'||
|-
| colspan="2" | Assyrian|| ܐܘܪܡܓ̰ܢܝܐ || || 'Assyrian from Urmia' ||
|-
|colspan=2| Avar || || || 'today'||
|-
|colspan=2| Azerbaijani|| || || 'blinds'|| Only occurs in loanwords.
|-
|colspan=2| Berta || colspan="2" align="center" | || 'honey'||
|-
|colspan=2| Breton|| || || 'play'||
|-
|colspan=2| Bulgarian || || || 'the man' || See Bulgarian phonology
|-
| colspan="2" |Bengali
|
|
|'version'
|Only occurs in loanwords. See Bengali phonology
|-
|Catalan
|Eastern
|gel
|
|'ice'
|Its pronunciation varies between an alveolo-palatal and a postalveolar fricative. See Catalan phonology.
|-
|colspan=2| Chechen|| / || || 'sheep'||
|-
|rowspan=2| Chinese || Quzhou dialect || 床 || ||'bed'||
|-
| Fuzhou dialect || 只隻 || || 'this one'
|
|-
|colspan=2| Corsican|| || || 'church' || Also in Gallurese
|-
|colspan=2| Czech || || || 'men' || See Czech phonology
|-
|colspan=2| Dutch || || || 'garage' || Only occurs in loanwords. See Dutch phonology.
|-
|Emilian
|Bolognese
|
|
|'case'
|Apical; not labialized; may be or instead.
|-
|colspan=2| English || || || 'vision' || See English phonology
|-
|colspan=2| Esperanto || || || 'food' || See Esperanto phonology
|-
|colspan=2| French ||jour|| || 'day'|| See French phonology
|-
| German || Standard || || || 'garage' || Laminal or apico-laminal and strongly labialized. || || || 'magazine'||
|-
|colspan=2| Goemai || zhiem|| || 'sickle'||
|-
| Greek || Cypriot|| || || 'sky blue'||
|-
|colspan=2| Gwich’in || || || 'wolf'||
|-
|colspan=2| Hän || || || 'wolf'||
|-
|colspan=2| Hebrew|| || || 'genre' || Phoneme present in loanwords only. See Modern Hebrew phonology
|-
| rowspan="2" | Hindustani
| Hindi|| || rowspan="2" ||| rowspan="2" | 'dragon' || rowspan="2" | Only occurs in loanwords. See Hindustani phonology
|-
|Urdu
|
|-
|colspan=2| Hungarian || || || 'rose' || See Hungarian phonology
|-
|colspan=2| Ingush|| / || || 'sheep'||
|-
|Italian
|Tuscan|||||| 'press' || See Italian phonology
|-
|colspan=2| Judaeo-Spanish|| || || 'woman'||
|-
|colspan=2| Juǀʼhoan || ju || || 'person'||
|-
|colspan=2| Kabardian || || || 'tree'||
|-
|colspan=2| Kabyle || || || 'my grandfather'||
|-
|colspan=2| Kashubian ||kòżdi rôz ||||'constantly'||
|-
|colspan=2| Kazakh|| || || 'seven'||
|-
|colspan=2| Latvian|| || || 'to dry'|| See Latvian phonology
|-
|colspan=2| Ligurian|| || || 'light'||
|-
| Limburgish || Maastrichtian || || || 'jeweller' || Laminal post-alveolar with an unclear amount of palatalization.
|-
|colspan=2| Lithuanian|| || || 'wife'|| See Lithuanian phonology
|-
|colspan=2| Livonian|| kūž || || 'six' ||
|-
| Lombard || Western|| resgiôra || || 'matriarch' ||
|-
|colspan=2| Macedonian || || || 'toad' || See Macedonian phonology
|-
|colspan=2| Megrelian || ჟირი/žiri || || 'two'||
|-
|colspan=2| Navajo || łizh || || 'urine'||
|-
|colspan=2| Neapolitan|| || || 'to slam'||
|-
|colspan=2| Ngas|| zhaam || || 'chin'||
|-
| Ngwe || Mmockngie dialect || colspan="2" align="center" | || 'to split'||
|-
|rowspan=2| Occitan || Auvergnat|| rowspan="2" | || ||rowspan=2| 'money'|| Southern dialects
|-
| Gascon || ||
|-
|colspan=2| Pashto || ژوول/žowul || ||'chew'||
|-
|colspan=2| Persian|| || || 'eyelash'|| See Persian phonology
|-
|rowspan=5| Polish || Gmina Istebna ||rowspan=5| ||rowspan=5| ||rowspan=5| 'green' ||rowspan=5| and merge into in these dialects. In standard Polish, is commonly used to transcribe what actually is a laminal voiced retroflex sibilant.
|-
| Lubawa dialect
|-
| Malbork dialect || || || 'store' || Also described as alveolo-palatal . See Portuguese phonology
|-
|colspan=2| Romani ||žanel || || 'to know' ||
|-
|colspan=2| Romanian || || || 'embers'|| See Romanian phonology
|-
| Scottish Gaelic || Barra || || || 'hour' || Dialectal allophone of , now primarily heard among older speakers in the south of the island and Vatersay.
|-
|colspan=2| Serbo-Croatian || / || || 'yellow' || May be laminal retroflex instead, depending on the dialect. See Serbo-Croatian phonology
|-
|rowspan=2| Silesian || Gmina Istebna || || || ||rowspan=2| These dialects merge and into .
|-
| Jablunkov || || || 'I' || Most dialects. || || || 'they' || See Spanish phonology and
|-
|colspan=2| Tadaksahak ||colspan=2 align=center| || 'to answer' ||
|-
|colspan=2| Tagish ||colspan=2 align=center| || 'what' ||
|-
|colspan=2| Turkish || || || 'dew'||Only occurs in loanwords. See Turkish phonology
|-
|colspan=2| Turkmen || || || 'giraffe'||Only occurs in loanwords.
|-
|rowspan=2| Tutchone|| Northern|| || || 'what'||
|-
| Southern|| || || 'berry'||
|-
| colspan="2" | Ukrainian || || || 'frog' || See Ukrainian phonology
|-
|colspan=2| Veps || || || 'five'||
|-
|colspan=2| Welayta || colspan="2" align="center" | || 'bush' ||
|-
|colspan=2| West Frisian || || || 'luggage' || See West Frisian phonology
|-
|colspan=2| Yiddish || || || 'orange' || See Yiddish phonology
|-
| Zapotec|| Tilquiapan|| llan || || 'anger' ||
|}
The sound in Russian denoted by is commonly transcribed as a palato-alveolar fricative but is actually a laminal retroflex fricative.
In English, the phoneme is often found as a hyperforeign substitute for in certain borrowings, Beijing (Mandarin Chinese , a voiceless ), raj, Taj Mahal, and sometimes even parmesan (French ; Italian ).
Voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative
A voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative is a consonantal sound. As the International Phonetic Alphabet does not have separate symbols for the post-alveolar consonants (the same symbol is used for all coronal places of articulation that are not palatalized), this sound is usually transcribed (retracted constricted ).
Features
However, it does not have the grooved tongue and directed airflow, or the high frequencies, of a sibilant.
- Its place of articulation is postalveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge.
Occurrence
{| class="wikitable"
! Language !! Word !! IPA !! Meaning !! Notes
|-
| Dutch || || || 'lake' || A rare post-vocalic allophone of . Realization of varies considerably among dialects. See Dutch phonology.
|-
| Manx || || || 'big' || Pre-consonantal and word-final realization of , in free variation with other allophones.
|}
See also
- Ezh
- Voiceless postalveolar fricative
- Index of phonetics articles
- Voiceless retroflex fricative