Voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant

Voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant
ʑ
ʒʲ
IPA number	183
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʑ
Unicode (hex)	U+0291
X-SAMPA	z\
Braille
Image
Sound

The voiced alveolo-palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some oral languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʑ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is z\. The closest representation in English is a voiced postalveolar fricative as in the word Asia.

Features

alveolo-palatal fricative [ɕ, ʑ]

Features of the voiced 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 palatalized, meaning that the middle of the tongue bowed, raised towards the hard palate.
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• 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
Abkhaz		ажьа	[aˈʑa]	'hare'	See Abkhaz phonology
Adyghe		жьау	[ʑaːw]	'shadow'
Catalan	Eastern and Majorcan	ajut	[əˈʑut]	'help' (n.)	See Catalan phonology
Chinese	Southern Min	今仔日	[kɪn˧a˥ʑɪt˥]	'today'
Japanese		火事 kaji	[kaʑi]	'fire'	Found in free variation with [dʲʑ] between vowels. See Japanese phonology
Kabardian		жьэ	[ʑa]	'mouth'
Lower Sorbian		źasety	[ʑasɛtɨ]	'tenth'
Pashto	Wazirwola dialect	ميږ‎	[miʑ]	'we'
Polish		źrebię	[ˈʑrɛbʲɛ̃]	'foal'	Also denoted by the digraph <zi>. See Polish phonology
Russian		езжу	[ˈjeʑːʊ]	'I drive'	Most speakers. Usually written <жж> or <зж>. See Russian phonology
Yi		ꑳ yi	[ʑi˧]	'tobacco'

See also

• Index of phonetics articles

Bibliography

• Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (1): 103–107, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001191 
• Recasens, Daniel; Espinosa, Aina (2007), "An electropalatographic and acoustic study of affricates and fricatives in two Catalan dialects", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37 (2): 143–172, doi:10.1017/S0025100306002829