In phonology, the ts–ch merger is the merger of the voiceless alveolar affricate /ts/ and the voiceless postalveolar affricate /tʃ/.
In Russian, it is the merger of the consonants rendered by letters Che and Tse. If the shift is towards Tse, it is called tsokanye (Russian: цоканье); the shift towards Che is called chokanye (Russian: чоканье).[1][2]
It is a regular sound change of Lower Sorbian, but not Upper Sorbian, as seen in the difference between Lower Sorbian cas and Upper Sorbian čas, both meaning "time".
In Polish the /tʃ/ → /ts/ merger is part of a more general dialectal feature called Mazurzenie present in many Polish dialects, named for the Masovian dialect.[3]
It also occurs in a few areas of the Chakavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian, known as tsakavism.
The sabesdiker losn feature of Northeastern Yiddish includes the /tʃ/ → /ts/ merger.
References
- ^ "Карта. Различение или совпадение согласных на месте ч и ц" (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2012-02-01.
- ^ "Легенда карты. Различение или совпадение согласных на месте ч и ц" (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2012-02-01.
- ^ Stanislaw Gogolewski, "Dialectology in Poland, 1873-1997", In: Towards a History of Linguistics in Poland, by E. F. K. Koerner, A. J. Szwedek (eds.) (2001) ISBN 90-272-4591-6, p. 128