Voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant

IPA number 182

Encoding

Entity (decimal) ɕ

Unicode (hex) U+0255

X-SAMPA s\

Kirshenbaum S;

Braille

Image

Sound

The voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some oral languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɕ⟩ ("c", plus the curl also found in its voiced counterpart ⟨ʑ⟩).

Although the voiceless alveolo-palatal non-sibilant fricative has not been reported to occur in any language, it can be represented in the IPA as either ⟨ç͇⟩ or ⟨ç̟⟩.

Features 1
Occurrence 2
See also 3
References 4
Bibliography 5

Features

alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives [ɕ, ʑ]

Features of the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative:

Its manner of articulation is sibilant fricative, which means it is generally produced by channeling air flow along a groove in the back of the tongue up to the place of articulation, at which point it is focused against the sharp edge of the nearly clenched teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.
Its place of articulation is alveolo-palatal. This means that:
- Its place of articulation is postalveolar, meaning that the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth in the area behind the alveolar ridge (the gum line).
- Its tongue shape is laminal, meaning that it is the tongue blade that contacts the roof of the mouth.
- It is heavily palatalized, meaning that the middle of the tongue is bowed and raised towards the hard palate.
Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Adyghe		щы		'three'
Catalan	Eastern and Majorcan^[1]	caixa	[ˈkaɕə]	'box'	See Catalan phonology
Chinese	Mandarin	西安/Xī'ān		'Xi'an'	Contrasts with /ʂ/ and /s/. See Mandarin phonology
Chuvash		çиçĕм	[ˈɕiɕ̬əm]	'lightning'	Contrasts with /ʂ/ and /s/.
Danish		sjæl	[ɕeˀl]	'soul'	See Danish phonology
Dutch	Some speakers	sjabloon	[ɕäˈbloːn]	'template'	May be [ʃ] or [sʲ] instead. See Dutch phonology
Guarani	Paraguayan	che	[ɕɛ]	'I'
Japanese^[2]		塩/shio	[ɕi.o]	'salt'	See Japanese phonology
Kabardian		щэ		'hundred'
Korean		시/si	[ɕi]	'poem'	See Korean phonology
Lower Sorbian^[3]		pśijaśel	[ˈpɕijäɕɛl]	'friend'
Norwegian		sjel	[ɕe:l]	'soul'	See Norwegian phonology
Pashto	Wazirwola dialect	لښکي‎	[ˈləɕki]	'little, slight'
Polish^[4]		śruba		'screw'	Contrasts with /ʂ/ and /s/. See Polish phonology
Portuguese^[5]	Brazilian	mexendo	[me̞ˈɕẽ̞du]	'stirring', 'disturbing'	Allophonic variation of /ʃ/. Contrasts with other sibilants only in onset. Argued both to be laminal [ʃ],^[6] and generally produced "in the middle of the hard palate",^[5] same of fellow alveolo-palatal [l̠ʲ] and [n̠ʲ],^[7] and further palatalized than Italian post-alveolars.^[8] Found in coda mainly before fricative, coronal and palatalized consonants in Brazil.^[9]^[10] See Portuguese phonology
	European (?)	mesclas	[ˈmɛɕklɐɕ]	'mixtures'
	Carioca	mesclas	[ˈmɛɕklɐɕ]	'mixtures'
	Many Brazilian dialects	estatísticas	[i̥ɕtɐˈtɕiɕtɕikɐs]	'statistics'
	Some speakers	estatísticas	[i̥stɐˈtɕiɕːikɐs]	'statistics'
Romanian	Transylvanian dialects^[11]	ce	[ɕɛ]	'what'	Realized as [tʃ] in standard Romanian. See Romanian phonology
Russian		счастье		'happiness'	Also represented by ⟨щ⟩. Contrasts with /ʂ/, /s/, and /sʲ/. See Russian phonology
Serbo-Croatian	Croatian^[12]	miš će	[mîɕ t͡ɕe̞]	'the mouse will'	Allophone of /ʃ/ before /t͡ɕ, d͡ʑ/.^[12] See Serbo-Croatian phonology
Serbo-Croatian	Some speakers of Montenegrin	śutra	[ɕutra]	'tomorrow'	Phonemically /sj/ or, in some cases, /s/.
Swedish	Finland	sjok	[ɕuːk]	'chunk'	Allophone of /ɧ/.
Swedish	Sweden	kjol		'skirt'	See Swedish phonology
Tibetan	Lhasa dialect	བཞི་	[ɕi˨˧]	'four'	Contrasts with /ʂ/.
Uzbek^[13]
Yi		ꑟ/xi	[ɕi˧]	'thread'

References

^ Recasens & Espinosa (2007:145, 167)
^ Okada (1991:94)
^ Zygis (2003), pp. 180–181.
^ Jassem (2003:103)
^ ^a ^b seqüências de (sibilante + africada alveopalatal) no português falado em Belo Horizonte Page 18 (Portuguese)
^ Análise acústica de sequências de fricativas seguidas de [i produzidas por japoneses aprendizes de português brasileiro] (Portuguese)
^ Considerações sobre o status das palato-alveolares em português (Portuguese)
^ Dialects of Brazil: the palatalization of the phonemes /t/ and /d/ Page 27 (Portuguese)
^ Pará Federal University – The pronunciation of /s/ and its variations across Bragança municipality's Portuguese (Portuguese)
^ Rio de Janeiro Federal University – The variation of post-vocallic /S/ in the speech of Petrópolis, Itaperuna and Paraty (Portuguese)
^ Pop (1938), p. 29.
^ ^a ^b Landau et al. (1999:68)
^ Sjoberg (1963:11)

Bibliography

Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (1): 103–107,
Landau, Ernestina; Lončarić, Mijo; Horga, Damir; Škarić, Ivo (1999), "Croatian", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 66–69,
Okada, Hideo (1991), "Japanese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 21 (2): 94–97,
Pop, Sever (1938), Micul Atlas Linguistic Român, Muzeul Limbii Române Cluj
Recasens, Daniel; Espinosa, Aina (2007), "An electropalatographic and acoustic study of affricates and fricatives in two Catalan dialects" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37 (2): 143–172,
Sjoberg, Andrée F. (1963), Uzbek Structural Grammar
Zygis, Marzena (2003), "Phonetic and Phonological Aspects of Slavic Sibilant Fricatives" (PDF), ZAS Papers in Linguistics 3: 175–213

International Phonetic Alphabet

IPA topics

IPA	International Phonetic Association History of the IPA Extensions to the IPA Kiel convention (1989) Journal of the IPA (JIPA) Naming conventions

Phonetics	Diacritics Segments Tone letter Place of articulation Manner of articulation

Special topics	Case variants of IPA letters Handwritten IPA Obsolete and nonstandard symbols IPA chart for English dialects

Encodings	SAMPA X-SAMPA Kirshenbaum TIPA Phonetic symbols in Unicode WorldBet IPA Braille

Consonants

IPA pulmonic consonantschart image • audio

Place →

Labial

Coronal

Dorsal

Laryngeal

↓ Manner

Bilabial

Labiodental

Linguolabial

Dental

Alveolar

Palato-
alveolar

Retroflex

Alveolo-
palatal

Palatal

Velar

Uvular

Pharyngeal
/ Epiglottal

Glottal

Nasal

m̥

n̼̊

n̼

n̥

ɳ̊

ɲ̊

ŋ̊

ɴ̥

Stop

p̪

b̪

t̼

d̼

Sibilant affricate

tʃ

dʒ

ʈʂ

ɖʐ

tɕ

dʑ

Non-sibilant affricate

pɸ

bβ

p̪f

b̪v

tθ

dð

tθ̠

dð̠

t̠ɹ̠̊˔

d̠ɹ̠˔

cç

ɟʝ

ɡɣ

qχ

ɢʁ

ʡħ

ʡʕ

ʔh

Sibilant fricative

Non-sibilant fricative

θ̼

ð̼

θ̱

ð̠

ɹ̠̊˔

ɹ̠˔

ɦ ʔ̞

Approximant

ɸ˕

θ̞

ɹ̥

ɻ̊

j̊

ɰ̊

Flap or tap

ⱱ̟

ⱱ

ɾ̼

ɾ̥

ɽ̊

ɢ̆

ʡ̮

Trill

r̼

r̥

ɽr̥

ɽr

ʀ̥

Lateral affricate

tɬ

dɮ

ʈɭ̊˔

cʎ̥˔

kʟ̝̊

ɡʟ̝

Lateral fricative

ɭ̊˔

ʎ̥˔

ʎ̝

ʟ̝̊

ʟ̝

Lateral approximant

l̼

l̥

ɭ̊

ʎ̥

ʟ̠

Lateral flap

ɺ̼

ɭ̆

ʎ̮

ʟ̆

Non-pulmonic consonants
Simple clicks	ʘ	ʘ̬	ʘ̃	ǀ	ǀ̬	ǀ̃	ǃ	ǃ̬	ǃ̃
Simple clicks	ǂ	ǂ̬	ǂ̃	ǁ	ǁ̬	ǁ̃	ǃ˞	ǃ̬˞	ǃ̃˞
Other clicks	ʘ̃ˀ	ʘˀ	ˀʘ̃	ʘ͡q	ʘ͡qχ	ʘ͡qʼ	ʘ͡qχʼ	¡	ʞ
Implosives	ɓ	ɗ	ᶑ	ʄ	ɠ	ʛ
Implosives	ɓ̥	ɗ̥	ᶑ̥	ʄ̊	ɠ̊	ʛ̥
Ejectives	pʼ	tʼ	ʈʼ	cʼ	kʼ	qʼ	ʡʼ
	fʼ	θʼ	sʼ	ɬʼ	ʃʼ	ʂʼ	ɕʼ	xʼ	χʼ
	tsʼ	tɬʼ	tʃʼ	ʈʂʼ	tɕʼ	cʎ̝̥ʼ	kxʼ	kʟ̝̊ʼ	qχʼ

Co-articulated consonants
Continuants	ʍ	w	ɥ̊	ɥ	ɫ
Occlusives	k͡p	ɡ͡b	ŋ͡m	ɧ
Occlusives	t͡p	d͡b	n͡m	q͡ʡ

— These tables contain phonetic symbols, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help]

— Where symbols appear in pairs, left–right represent the voiceless–voiced consonants.

— Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged to be impossible or not distinctive.

Chart image

Pulmonics
Non-pulmonics
Affricates
Co-articulated

Vowels

Front

Near-front

Central

Near-back

Back

Close

•iy

•ɨʉ

•ɯu

•ɪʏ

•ɪ̈ʊ̈

•eø

•ɘɵ

•ɤo

•e̞ø̞

•əɵ̞

•ɤ̞o̞

•ɛœ

•ɜɞ

•ʌɔ

•æ

•aɶ

•äɒ̈

•ɑɒ

Near-close

Close-mid

Mid

Open-mid

Near-open

Open

• chart • chart with audio •

Voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant