Voiceless palatal fricative | |||
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ç | |||
IPA number | 138 | ||
Encoding | |||
Entity (decimal) | ç |
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Unicode (hex) | U+00E7 | ||
X-SAMPA | C |
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Kirshenbaum | C |
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Braille | ![]() ![]() |
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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.[1] 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.
Contents
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 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Assamese | সীমা/xima | [çima] | 'limit/border' | ||
Azerbaijani[2] | Some dialects | çörək | [tʃœˈɾæç] | 'bread' | Allophone of /c/ |
Berber | Kabyle | ḵtil | [çtil] | 'to measure' | |
Danish | Standard[3] | pjaske | [ˈpçæsɡ̊ə] | 'splash' | May be alveolo-palatal [ɕ] instead.[3] Before /j/, aspiration in /pʰ, tˢ, kʰ/ is realized as devoicing and fortition of /j/.[3] Note, however, that the sequence /tˢj/ is normally realized as an affricate [t͡ɕ].[4] See Danish phonology |
Dutch | Standard Belgian[5] | acht | [ɑç̠t] | 'eight' | Post-palatal; may be velar [x] instead.[5] See Dutch phonology |
Southern accents[5] | |||||
Standard Netherlandic[5] | wiegje | [ˈʋiçjə] | 'crib' | Allophone of /x/ before /j/ for some speakers.[5] See Dutch phonology | |
English | Australian[6] | hue | [çʉː] | 'hue' | Phonetic realization of the sequence /hj/.[6][7][8] See Australian English phonology and English phonology |
British[7][8] | |||||
Scouse[9] | like | [laɪ̯ç] | 'like' | Allophone of /k/; ranges from palatal to uvular, depending on the preceding vowel.[9] See English phonology | |
Finnish | vihko | [ˈʋiçko̞] | 'notebook' | Allophone of /h/. See Finnish phonology | |
German | nicht | ![]() |
'not' | Allophone of /x/. See German phonology | |
Greek[10] | ψυχή | ![]() |
'soul' | Post-palatal.[10] See Modern Greek phonology | |
Haida | xíl | [çɪ́l] | 'leaf' | ||
Hungarian[11] | 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[12] | 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[13] | ich | [ɪ̞ç̠] | 'I' | Post-palatal; allophone of /x/ before and after front vowels.[13] |
Norwegian | Standard Eastern[14] | kjekk | [çɛ̝kː] | 'handsome' | Often alveolo-palatal [ɕ] instead; younger speakers in Bergen, Stavanger and Oslo merge it with /ʂ/.[14] See Norwegian phonology |
Pashto | Ghilji dialect[15] | 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[16] | fir | [çir] | 'thread' | Allophone of /f/ before /i/.[16] Realized as [f] in standard Romanian. See Romanian phonology |
Scottish Gaelic[17] | eich | [eç] | 'horses' | ||
Spanish | Chilean[18] | mujer | [muˈçe̞r] | 'woman' | Allophone of /x/ before front vowels. See Spanish phonology |
Uzbek[19] | [example needed] | Post-palatal;[19] weakly fricated.[19] Occurs word-initially and pre-consonantally, otherwise it is post-velar.[19] | |||
Walloon | texhe | [tɛç] | 'to knit' |
See also
Notes
- ^ Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996:167–68)
- ^ Damirchizadeh (1972:96)
- ^ a b c Basbøll (2005:65–66)
- ^ Grønnum (2005:148)
- ^ a b c d e Collins & Mees (2003:191)
- ^ a b Cox (2012:149)
- ^ a b Roach (2009:43)
- ^ a b Wells, John C (2009-01-29), "A huge query", John Wells's phonetic blog, retrieved 2016-03-13
- ^ a b Watson (2007:353)
- ^ a b Arvaniti (2007), p. 20.
- ^ Siptár & Törkenczy (2007:205)
- ^ Okada (1991:95)
- ^ a b Heijmans & Gussenhoven (1998), p. 108.
- ^ a b Kristoffersen (2000), p. 23.
- ^ Henderson (1983), p. 595.
- ^ a b Pop (1938), p. 30.
- ^ Oftedal (1956:?)
- ^ Palatal phenomena in Spanish phonology Page 113
- ^ a b c d Sjoberg (1963), pp. 11.
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
- Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2003), The Phonetics of English and Dutch, Fifth Revised Edition (PDF), ISBN 9004103406
- Cox, Felicity (2012), Australian English Pronunciation and Transcription, New York: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-14589-3
- 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, doi:10.2307/602038, JSTOR 602038
- Kristoffersen, Gjert (2000), The Phonology of Norwegian, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-823765-5
- 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