VOICED PALATAL FRICATIVE

The 'voiced 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 (crossed-tail j), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j.
The voiced palatal fricative is a very rare sound, occurring in only seven of the 317 languages surveyed by the origical UPSID database. It is noteworthy, however, that in only two of the languages (Komi, Margi) does it occur along with its voiceless counterpart.
Its rarity and tendency to occur unpaired derive from the fact that the only source of a voiced palatal fricative is the rare process of fortition (strengthening) of the very common palatal approximant .

Contents

Features

Occurrence

See also

Features

Features of the voiced 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 against the hard palate.

★ Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.

★ It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.

★ It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.

★ The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Occurrence

Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Belgian Dutch	'g'aan		'to go'	See Dutch phonology
Greek	'γει'α		'hello'	See Modern Greek phonology
Kabyle			'to slip'
Spanish	'''y'eísmo''		yeísmo	May also be represented by in certain dialects. See Spanish phonology
Swedish	'''j'ord''		'soil'	See Swedish phonology

See also

★ List of phonetics topics