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The 'voiceless palato-alveolar affricate' or 'domed postalveolar affricate' is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English speakers as the "ch" sound in "chip".
Historically, this sound often derives from a former voiceless velar plosive (k, as in English, Slavic languages and Romance languages), or a voiceless dental plosive by way of palatalization, especially next to a front vowel.

Contents

Features

Transcription

Occurrence

See also

Features

Features of the voiceless domed postalveolar affricate:

★ Its manner of articulation is sibilant affricate, which means it is produced by first stopping the airflow entirely, then directing it through a groove in the tongue and over the sharp edge of the teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.

★ Its place of articulation is ''palato-alveolar'', that is, domed (partially palatalized) postalveolar, which means it is articulated with the front of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue bunched up ("domed") at the palate.

★ Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.

★ 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.

Transcription

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses two symbols together to represent this sound: . They may be joined with a tiebar (), and the may sometimes be given the "retracted" diacritic (). Formerly a ligature () was used. Other phonetic transcriptions used include:

★ 'c'

★ 'č'

★ 'ch'

★ 'tc' (older Americanist transcription)

★ 'tš'

★ 'cs'

★ 'cz'

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Albanian		'''ç'elur''		'open'
Atkan Aleut		'''ch'amĝul''		'to wash'
Amharic				'you' f. sg.
Azeri		''Əkin'ç'i''		'the ploughman'
Basque		'''tx'alupa''		'boat'
Czech		''mor'č'e''		'guinea pig'	See Czech phonology
Bohairic Coptic				'touch'
Deg Hit'an		example needed		--
Dena’ina		example needed		--
Esperanto		'''ĉ'ar''		'because'
Faroese		'''tj'ørn''		'lake'
Georgian		'ჩ'რდილოეთი		'north'
Gwich’in		example needed		--
Hän		example needed		--
Hebrew		example needed		--	See Hebrew phonology
Italian		'''ci'ao''		'ciao'	See Italian phonology
English		''blea'ch'''		'bleach'	See English phonology
Hungarian		'''cs'ap''		'faucet, he/she strikes'
K'iche'		''K'i'ch'e'''		K'iche''	Contrasts with ejective form
Maltese		''bli'ċ'''		'bleach'
Norwegian		'''kj'økken''		'kitchen'	See Norwegian phonology
Persian		چوب		?	See Persian phonology
Brazilian Portuguese		''presiden't'e''		'president'
Punjabi		example needed		--
Romanian		'''c'er''		'sky'	See Romanian phonology
Rotuman		example needed		--
Scottish Gaelic		slàinte		'?'
Serbian		Чоколада/'''č'okoláda''		'chocolate'
Slovak		''kľú'č'''		'key'
Spanish		'''ch'afar''		'to flatten'	See Spanish phonology
Turkish		''u'ç'ak''		'airplane'
Ubykh				'pepper'	See Ubykh phonology
Ukrainian		чу		'if'	See Ukrainian phonology

Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Japanese, and Thai have a Voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate ; this is technically postalveolar but it is less precise to use .

See also

★ List of phonetics topics