Voiceless palatal fricative

Voiceless palatal fricative
ç
IPA number	138
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ç
Unicode (hex)	U+00E7
X-SAMPA	C
Kirshenbaum	C
Braille
Image
Sound
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The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ç⟩. The symbol ç is the letter c with a cedilla, as used to spell French and Portuguese words such as façade and ação. However, the sound represented by the letter ç in French, Portuguese and English orthography is not a voiceless palatal fricative but /s/, the voiceless alveolar fricative.

Palatal fricatives are relatively rare phonemes, and only 5% of the world's languages have /ç/ as a phoneme. The sound occurs, however, as an allophone of /x/ in German, or, in other languages, of /h/ in the vicinity of front vowels.

There is also a voiceless post-palatal fricative (also called pre-velar, fronted velar etc.) in some languages.

Features

Features of the voiceless palatal fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is palatal, which means it is articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised to 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
Azerbaijani	Some dialects	çörək	[tʃœˈɾæç]	'bread'	Allophone of /c/
Berber	Kabyle	ḵtil	[çtil]	'to measure'
Danish	Standard	pjaske	[ˈpçæsɡ̊ə]	'splash'	May be alveolo-palatal [ɕ] instead. Before /j/, aspiration in /pʰ, tˢ, kʰ/ is realized as devoicing and fortition of /j/. Note, however, that the sequence /tˢj/ is normally realized as an affricate [t͡ɕ]. See Danish phonology
Dutch	Southern	echt	[ɛx̟t̪]	'real'	Post-palatal; not all dialects. See Hard and soft G in Dutch and Dutch phonology
English	British	hue	[çuː]	'hue'	Allophone of /hj/. See English phonology
	Scouse	like	[laɪ̯ç]	'like'	Allophone of /k/; ranges from palatal to uvular, depending on the preceding vowel. See English phonology
Finnish		vihko	[ˈʋiçko̞]	'notebook'	Allophone of /h/. See Finnish phonology
German		nicht	[nɪçt]	'not'	Allophone of /x/. See German phonology
Greek		ψυχή	[ps̠iˈç̠i]	'soul'	Post-palatal. See Modern Greek phonology
Haida		xíl	[çɪ́l]	'leaf'
Hungarian		kapj	[ˈkɒpç]	'get' (imperative)	Allophone of /j/ between a voiceless obstruent and a word boundary. See Hungarian phonology
Icelandic		hérna	[ˈçɛrtn̥a]	'here'	See Icelandic phonology
Irish		a Sheáin	[ə çaːnʲ]	'John' (voc.)	See Irish phonology
Japanese		人/hito	[çi̥to̞]	'person'	Allophone of /h/ before /i/ and /j/. See Japanese phonology
Korean		힘 /him	[çim]	'strength'	Allophone of /h/ word-initially before /i/ and /j/. See Korean phonology
Limburgish	Weert dialect	ich	[e̠ç̠]	'I'	Post-palatal; allophone of /x/ before and after front vowels.
Norwegian		kjekk	[çek]	'handsome'	See Norwegian phonology
Pashto	Ghilji dialect	پښه‎	[pça]	'foot'
	Wardak dialect
Portuguese	Some Brazilian speakers	risonha	[çiˈzõ̞j̃ɐ]	'giggly', 'laughterful' (f.)	Allophone of /ʁ/, particularly before [i] or [ɪ] in onset context. See Portuguese phonology
Romanian	Muntenian dialects	fir	[çir]	'thread'	Allophone of /f/ before /i/. Realized as [f] in standard Romanian. See Romanian phonology
Scottish Gaelic		eich	[eç]	'horses'
Spanish	Chilean	mujer	[muˈçe̞r]	'woman'	Allophone of /x/ before front vowels. See Spanish phonology
Uzbek					Post-palatal; weakly fricated. Occurs word-initially and pre-consonantally, otherwise it is post-velar.
Walloon		texhe	[tɛç]	'to knit'

See also

• Index of phonetics articles

References

• Arvaniti, Amalia (2007), "Greek Phonetics: The State of the Art" (PDF), Journal of Greek Linguistics, 8: 97–208, doi:10.1075/jgl.8.08arv
• Basbøll, Hans (2005), The Phonology of Danish, ISBN 0-203-97876-5
• Damirchizadeh, A (1972), Modern Azerbaijani Language: Phonetics, Orthoepy and Orthography, Maarif Publ
• Grønnum, Nina (2005), Fonetik og fonologi, Almen og Dansk (3rd ed.), Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, ISBN 87-500-3865-6
• Heijmans, Linda; Gussenhoven, Carlos (1998), "The Dutch dialect of Weert" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 28: 107–112, doi:10.1017/S0025100300006307
• Henderson, Michael M. T. (1983), "Four Varieties of Pashto", Journal of the American Oriental Society, American Oriental Society, 103 (3): 595–597, JSTOR 602038
• Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996), The sounds of the World's Languages, Oxford: Blackwell, ISBN 0-631-19815-6
• Oftedal, M. (1956), The Gaelic of Leurbost, Oslo: Norsk Tidskrift for Sprogvidenskap
• Okada, Hideo (1991), "Japanese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 21 (2): 94–97, doi:10.1017/S002510030000445X
• Pop, Sever (1938), Micul Atlas Linguistic Român, Muzeul Limbii Române Cluj
• Roach, Peter (2009), English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course, 1 (4th ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-71740-3
• Siptár, Péter; Törkenczy, Miklós (2007), The Phonology of Hungarian, The Phonology of the World's Languages, Oxford University Press
• Sjoberg, Andrée F. (1963), Uzbek Structural Grammar
• Watson, Kevin (2007), "Liverpool English" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37 (3): 351–360, doi:10.1017/s0025100307003180