A voiceless postalveolar or palato-alveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the "sh" sound in "ship".
The International Phonetic Association uses the phrase voiceless postalveolar fricative for the sibilant sound , though technically it also describes the voiceless postalveolar non-sibilant fricative , for which there are significant perceptual differences.
Voiceless palato-alveolar fricative
A voiceless palato-alveolar fricative or voiceless domed postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in many languages, including English. In English, it is usually spelled , as in ship.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , the letter esh introduced by Isaac Pitman (not to be confused with the integral symbol ).
An alternative symbol is , an s with a caron or háček, which is used in the Americanist phonetic notation and the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, as well as in the scientific and ISO 9 transliterations of Cyrillic. It originated with the Czech orthography of Jan Hus and was adopted in Gaj's Latin alphabet and other Latin alphabets of Slavic languages. It also features in the orthographies of many Baltic, Finno-Samic, North American and African languages.
Features Features of the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative:
Occurrence Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Adyghe 'donkey' Albanian 'house' Arabic Modern Standard 'sun' See Arabic phonology Armenian Eastern 'dog'Aromanian shi 'and' Assyrian ܫܒܬܐ šebta 'saturday' Asturian ('the') 'task' May be realised as , depending on context and speaker. Azerbaijani 'poem' Bashkir 'five' Basque 'hello' Apical.Bengaliদেশ'country'See Bengali phonology Breton 'chain' Bulgarian 'heroically' See Bulgarian phonology Catalan Some speakers 'grille' Its pronunciation varies between an alveolo-palatal and a palato-alveolar fricative. See Catalan phonology.Chechenшура / şura['ʃurə]'milk'Chuvashшурă['ʃurə]'white' Czech 'mash' See Czech phonology Dutch 'template' May be or instead. See Dutch phonology English sheep 'sheep' See English phonology Esperanto 'suspenders' See Esperanto phonology Faroese 'hospital' See Faroese phonology Finnish 'check' See Finnish phonology French 'expensive' See French phonology Galician 'trip' See Galician phonology Georgian 'quibbling' German Standard 'beautiful' Laminal or apico-laminal and strongly labialized. See Standard German phonology Greek Cypriot 'ugliness' Contrasts with and Ponticςςον 'snow' Hebrew 'peace' See Modern Hebrew phonology Hindustani Hindi शर्मिन्दगी 'embarrassment' See Hindustani phonology. Urdu شرمندگی Hungarian 'salt' See Hungarian phonology Ilocano 'I' Irish 'she' See Irish phonology Italian Marked accents of Emilia-Romagna 'you go up' Apical non-labialized; may be or instead. It corresponds to in standard Italian. See Italian phonology Standard 'bands' See Italian phonology Kabardian 'donkey' Contrasts with a labialized form Kabyle 'to consult' Kashubian 'our' See Kashubian languageKazakhшаш / şaş[ʃаʃ]'hair' Kurdish 'night' See Kurdish phonology Latvian 'scarf' See Latvian phonology Lillooet 'creek' Limburgish Maastrichtian 'darling' Laminal post-alveolar with an unclear amount of palatalization.. The authors state that is "pre-palatal, articulated with the blade of the tongue against the post-alveolar place of articulation". This makes it unclear whether this sound is palato-alveolar (somewhat palatalized post-alveolar) or alveolo-palatal (strongly palatalized post-alveolar). Lingala 'grey parrot' Lithuanian 'armor' See Lithuanian phonology Macedonian 'what' See Macedonian phonology Malay 'company'Malayalamവീശൽ/veeshal'fanning' or 'blowing'See Malayalam phonology Maltese 'what is your name?' Marathi 'word' See Marathi phonologyMayanYucatecko'ox[koʔoʃ]'let's go' Mopan 'chicken' Mpade 'cow' Mutsun 'having acne' Neapolitan 'urchin' Occitan Auvergnat 'bad' See Occitan phonology Gascon Limousin 'his' Persian 'king' See Persian phonology Polish Gmina Istebna 'hay' and merge into in these dialects. In standard Polish, is commonly used to transcribe what actually is a laminal voiceless retroflex sibilant Lubawa dialect Malbork dialect Ostróda dialect Warmia dialect Portuguese 'shaman' Also described as alveolo-palatal . See Portuguese phonology Punjabi 'lion' Romani 'ten' Romanian 'bosses' See Romanian phonology Sahaptin šíš 'mush' Scottish Gaelic 'sing' See Scottish Gaelic phonology Serbo-Croatian 'school' See Serbo-Croatian phonology Silesian Gmina Istebna These dialects merge and into Jablunkov Slovakškola'school'See Slovak phonology Slovene 'school' See Slovene phonology Somali 'five' See Somali phonologySpanish New Mexican 'boastful' Corresponds to in other dialects. See Spanish phonology Northern Mexico Cuban Panamanian 'chocolate' Southern Andalusia Chilean Rioplatense 'yesterday' May be voiced instead. See Spanish phonology and yeísmo Sranantongo syène [ˈʃɛne] 'blunder, disappointment' Swahili shule [ʃule] 'school'SwedishVästerbotten dialectsvår[ˈʃwoːr]'difficult' Tagalog 'he/she' See Tagalog phonology Telugu 'oath' See Telugu phonology Toda 'language' Contrasts /θ s̪ s̠ ʃ ʒ ʂ ʐ/. Tunica 'stone' Turkish 'sun' See Turkish phonology Ukrainian 'chess' See Ukrainian phonology Urdu 'thank you' See Hindustani phonology Uyghur 'city' Uzbek 'head' Walloon 'knit fabric' Welsh Standard 'speak' See Welsh phonology Southern dialects 'month' West Frisian 'animation' See West Frisian phonology Western Lombard Canzés 'nuisance' Wu Chinese Northern Wu (Shengpu locality) 'poem' Yiddish 'scientific' See Yiddish phonology Yorùbá 'open' Zapotec Tilquiapan 'how?'
In various languages, including English and French, it may have simultaneous labialization, i.e. , although this is usually not transcribed.
Classical Latin did not have , though it does occur in most Romance languages. For example, in French "singer" is pronounced . is descended from Latin , where was pronounced . The in Latin "science" was pronounced , but has shifted to in Italian .
Similarly, Proto-Germanic had neither nor , yet many of its descendants do. In most cases, this or descends from a Proto-Germanic . For instance, Proto-Germanic *skipą ("hollow object, water-borne vessel larger than a boat") was pronounced . The English word "ship" has been pronounced without the the longest, the word being descended from Old English "" , which already also had the , though the Old English spelling etymologically indicated that the old had once been present.
This change took longer to catch on in West Germanic languages other than Old English, though it eventually did. The second West Germanic language to undergo this sound shift was Old High German. After High German, the shift most likely then occurred in Low Saxon. After Low Saxon, Middle Dutch began the shift, but it stopped shifting once it reached , and has kept that pronunciation since. Then, most likely through influence from German and Low Saxon, North Frisian experienced the shift.
Then, Swedish quite swiftly underwent the shift, which resulted in the very uncommon phoneme, which, aside from Swedish, is only used in Colognian, a variety of High German, though not as a replacement for the standard High German but a coronalized . However, the exact realization of Swedish varies considerably among dialects; for instance, in Northern dialects it tends to be realized as . See sj-sound for more details. Finally, the last to undergo the shift was Norwegian, in which the result of the shift was .
The sound in Russian denoted by is commonly transcribed as a palato-alveolar fricative but is actually an apical retroflex fricative.
Voiceless postalveolar non-sibilant fricative
A voiceless postalveolar non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It can be transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as (dated variants , ), which indicates a that is retracted, raised, and voiceless.
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 Language Word IPA Meaning Notes English Received Pronunciation crew 'crew' Only partially devoiced. It is a realization of after the word-initial fortis plosives , unless they are preceded by within the same syllable. See English phonology
Voiceless postalveolar approximant
Some scholars also posit the voiceless postalveolar approximant distinct from the fricative. The approximant may be represented in the IPA as . Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Ao Changki 'stitch' Contrasts with voiced . Treated phonologically as approximant, but phonetically fricative-like. Bengali Some dialects 'again' Apical; possible allophone of in the syllable coda. See Bengali phonology
See also Index of phonetics articles Voiced postalveolar fricative Cedilla Shibboleth
Notes
References
External links