Voiceless palatal fricative

Voiceless palatal fricative
ç
Image
IPA number	138
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ç
Unicode (hex)	U+00E7
X-SAMPA	C
Kirshenbaum	C
Sound

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 words such as façade. However, the sound represented by the letter ç in French 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, such as the non-silent 'h' of huge as in most dialects of English.

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	ḵil	[çil]	'to measure'
Dutch		acht	[ˈɑçt]	'eight'	Common in southern dialects such as all of Dutch-speaking Belgium some southern Dutch provinces. See Dutch phonology
English		hue	[çuː]	'hue'	Allophone of /h/. See English phonology
Finnish		vihko	[ˈʋiçko̞]	'notebook'	Allophone of /h/. See Finnish phonology
German		dicht	[dɪçt]	'dense'	See German phonology
Greek		χιόνι/chióni	[ˈço̞ni]	'snow'	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	[çjɛrtna]	'here'	See Icelandic phonology
Irish		a Sheáin	[ə çaːnʲ]	'John (Voc.)'	See Irish phonology
Korean		힘/him	[çim]	'strength'	Allophone of /h/. See Korean phonology
Japanese		人/hito	[çito]	'person'	Allophone of /h/ before /i/. See Japanese phonology
Norwegian		kyss	[çʏsː]	'kiss'	See Norwegian phonology
Pashto	Ghilzai and Wardak dialects	پښه‎	[pça]	'foot'
Polish		hiacynt	[çat͡sɨnt]	'hyacinth'	See Polish phonology
Scottish Gaelic		eich	[eç]	'horses'
Xârâcùù		?	[çɛɡɛ]	'stone'

See also

• List of phonetics topics

References

• Damirchizadeh, A (1972), Modern Azerbaijani Language: Phonetics, Orthoepy and Orthography, Maarif Publ 
• Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian, The sounds of the World's Languages, Oxford: Blackwell, ISBN 0-631-19815-6 
• Okada, Hideo (1991), "Phonetic Representation:Japanese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 21 (2): 94–97 
• Roach, Peter (2009), English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course, 1 (fourth ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 052171740 
• Siptár, Péter; Törkenczy, Miklós (2007), The Phonology of Hungarian, The Phonology of the World's Languages, Oxford University Press 
• Tryon, Darrell T. (1995), Comparative Austronesian Dictionary, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, ISBN 3-110-12729-6 
• Wells, John C (2009-01-29). "A huge query". John Wells's phonetic blog. http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/blog0901.htm. Retrieved 2010-12-28.