Voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant

Voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant
ɕ
IPA number	182
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɕ
Unicode (hex)	U+0255
X-SAMPA	s\
Kirshenbaum	S;
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Sound
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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⟩).

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	[ɕə]	'three'
Catalan	Eastern and Majorcan	caixa	[ˈkaɕə]	'box'	See Catalan phonology
Chinese	Mandarin	西安/Xī'ān	[ɕí.án]	'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		塩/shio	[ɕi.o]	'salt'	See Japanese phonology
Kabardian		щэ	[ɕa]	'hundred'
Korean		시/si	[ɕi]	'poem'	See Korean phonology
Lower Sorbian		pśijaśel	[ˈpɕijäɕɛl]	'friend'
Luxembourgish		liicht	[liːɕt]	'light'	Allophone of /χ/ after phonologically front vowels; some speakers merge it with [ʃ]. See Luxembourgish phonology
Norwegian		sjel	[ɕe:l]	'soul'	See Norwegian phonology
Pashto	Wazirwola dialect	لښکي‎	[ˈləɕki]	'little, slight'
Polish		śruba	[ˈɕrubä]	'screw'	Contrasts with /ʂ/ and /s/. See Polish phonology
Portuguese	Brazilian	mexendo	[me̞ˈɕẽ̞du]	'moving'	Allophonic variation of /ʃ/. Contrasts with other sibilants only in onset. Argued both to be laminal [ʃ], and generally produced "in the middle of the hard palate", same of fellow alveolo-palatal [l̠ʲ] and [n̠ʲ], and further palatalized than Italian post-alveolars. Found in coda mainly before fricative, coronal and palatalized consonants in Brazil. See Portuguese phonology
	European (?)	mesclas	[ˈmɛɕklɐɕ]	'mixtures'
	Carioca
	Many Brazilian dialects	estatísticas	[i̥ɕtɐˈtɕiɕtɕikɐs]	'statistics'
	Some speakers		[i̥stɐˈtɕiɕːikɐs]
Romanian	Transylvanian dialects	ce	[ɕɛ]	'what'	Realized as [tʃ] in standard Romanian. See Romanian phonology
Russian		счастье	[ˈɕːæsʲtʲjə]	'happiness'	Also represented by ⟨щ⟩. Contrasts with /ʂ/, /s/, and /sʲ/. See Russian phonology
Sema		ashi	[à̠ɕì]	'meat'	Possible allophone of /ʃ/ before /i, e/.
Serbo-Croatian	Croatian	miš će	[mîɕ t͡ɕe̞]	'the mouse will'	Allophone of /ʃ/ before /t͡ɕ, d͡ʑ/. See Serbo-Croatian phonology
	Some speakers of Montenegrin	śutra	[ɕutra]	'tomorrow'	Phonemically /sj/ or, in some cases, /s/.
Swedish	Finland	sjok	[ɕuːk]	'chunk'	Allophone of /ɧ/.
	Sweden	kjol	[ɕuːl]	'skirt'	See Swedish phonology
Tibetan	Lhasa dialect	བཞི་	[ɕi˨˧]	'four'	Contrasts with /ʂ/.
Uzbek
Yi		ꑟ/xi	[ɕi˧]	'thread'

See also

• Index of phonetics articles