A voiced postalveolar or palato-alveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to many if not most English-speakers as the "s" sound in "fusion".

The International Phonetic Association uses the phrase voiced postalveolar fricative for the sibilant sound , though technically it also describes the voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative , for which there are significant perceptual differences.

Voiced palato-alveolar fricative A voiced palato-alveolar fricative or voiced domed postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages.

Transcription The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is the lower case form of the letter Ezh (). An alternative symbol used in some older and American linguistic literature is , a z with a caron. In some transcriptions of alphabets such as the Cyrillic, the sound is represented by the digraph .

Although present in English, the sound is not represented by a specific letter or digraph, but is formed by yod-coalescence of and in words such as measure. It also appears in some loanwords, mainly from French (thus written with and ).

occurs as a borrowed phoneme in a number of languages under the influence of French, Persian or Slavic languages, as in the Germanic languages (Dutch, English, German and Luxembourgish), the Romance languages (Italian and Romanian), the Turkic languages (Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Turkish, and Uyghur), and the Uralic languages (Estonian and Hungarian), Breton and Maltese. The phoneme has the lowest consonant frequency in both English and Persian.

In English and French, may have simultaneous lip rounding (), although this is rarely indicated in transcription.

Features Features of a voiced palato-alveolar fricative:

Occurrence Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Adyghe جاچئا 'beard' Albanian 'noise' ArabicLevantine'crazy'Maghrebi 'husband'Hejazi'ready'An allophone of used by a number of speakers. ArmenianEastern 'hour' Assyrian ܐܘܪܡܓ̰ܢܝܐ 'Assyrian from Urmia' Avar ژاقا 'today' Azerbaijani ژالۆز 'blinds' Only occurs in loanwords. Berta 'honey' Breton 'play' Bulgarian 'the man' See Bulgarian phonology Catalan Some speakers 'help' (n.) Its pronunciation varies between an alveolo-palatal and a postalveolar fricative. See Catalan phonology 'blue fish' Chechen / ژی 'sheep' Chinese Quzhou dialect 床 'bed' Fuzhou dialect 只隻 'this one' Corsican 'church' Also in Gallurese Czech 'men' See Czech phonology Dutch 'garage' Only occurs in loanwords. See Dutch phonology.EmilianBolognese'case'Apical; not labialized; may be or instead. English 'vision' See English phonology Esperanto 'food' See Esperanto phonology French jour 'day' See French phonology German Standard 'garage' Laminal or apico-laminal and strongly labialized. Some speakers may merge it with . Only occurs in loanwords. See Standard German phonology Georgian 'magazine' Goemai zhiem 'sickle' Greek Cypriot 'sky blue' Gwich’in 'wolf' Hän 'wolf' Hebrew 'genre' Phoneme present in loanwords only. See Modern Hebrew phonology Hindustani Hindi 'dragon' Only occurs in loanwords. See Hindustani phonologyUrdu Hungarian 'rose' See Hungarian phonology Ingush / 'sheep'ItalianTuscan 'press' See Italian phonology Judaeo-Spanish 'woman' Juǀʼhoan ju 'person' Kabardian 'tree' Kabyle / جَدّي 'my grandfather' Kashubian kòżdi rôz 'constantly' Kazakh / ژەتی 'seven' Latvian 'to dry' See Latvian phonology Ligurian 'light' Limburgish Maastrichtian 'jeweller' Laminal post-alveolar with an unclear amount of palatalization.. The authors state that is "pre-palatal, articulated with the blade of the tongue against the post-alveolar place of articulation". This makes it unclear whether this sound is palato-alveolar (somewhat palatalized post-alveolar) or alveolo-palatal (strongly palatalized post-alveolar). Lithuanian 'wife' See Lithuanian phonology Livonian kūž 'six' Lombard Western resgiôra 'matriarch' Macedonian 'toad' See Macedonian phonology Megrelian ჟირი/žiri 'two' Navajo łizh 'urine' Neapolitan 'to slam' Ngas zhaam 'chin' Ngwe Mmockngie dialect 'to split' Occitan Auvergnat 'money' Southern dialects Gascon Pashto ژوول/žowul 'chew' Persian 'eyelash' See Persian phonology Polish Gmina Istebna 'green' and merge into in these dialects. In standard Polish, is commonly used to transcribe what actually is a laminal voiced retroflex sibilant. Lubawa dialect Malbork dialect Ostróda dialect Warmia dialect Portuguese 'store' Also described as alveolo-palatal . See Portuguese phonology Romani žanel 'to know' Romanian 'embers' See Romanian phonology Scottish Gaelic Barra 'hour' Dialectal allophone of , now primarily heard among older speakers in the south of the island and Vatersay. Serbo-Croatian / 'yellow' May be laminal retroflex instead, depending on the dialect. See Serbo-Croatian phonology Silesian Gmina Istebna These dialects merge and into . Jablunkov Sioux Lakota waŋži 'one' Slovakžena[ʒena]'woman'See Slovak phonology Slovene 'cereal' See Slovene phonology Spanish Rioplatense 'I' Most dialects. See Spanish phonology and Ecuadorian Andean 'they' See Spanish phonology and Tadaksahak 'to answer' Tagish 'what' Turkish 'dew'Only occurs in loanwords. See Turkish phonology Turkmen / ژراف 'giraffe'Only occurs in loanwords. Tutchone Northern 'what' Southern 'berry' Ukrainian 'frog' See Ukrainian phonology Veps 'five' Welayta 'bush' West Frisian 'luggage' See West Frisian phonology Yiddish 'orange' See Yiddish phonology Zapotec Tilquiapan llan 'anger'

The sound in Russian denoted by is commonly transcribed as a palato-alveolar fricative but is actually a laminal retroflex fricative.

In English, the phoneme is often found as a hyperforeign substitute for in certain borrowings, Beijing (Mandarin Chinese , a voiceless ), raj, Taj Mahal, and sometimes even parmesan (French ; Italian ).

Voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative

A voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative is a consonantal sound. As the International Phonetic Alphabet does not have separate symbols for the post-alveolar consonants (the same symbol is used for all coronal places of articulation that are not palatalized), this sound is usually transcribed (retracted constricted ).

Features However, it does not have the grooved tongue and directed airflow, or the high frequencies, of a sibilant. Its place of articulation is postalveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge.

Occurrence Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Dutch 'lake' A rare post-vocalic allophone of . Realization of varies considerably among dialects. See Dutch phonology. Manx 'big' Pre-consonantal and word-final realization of , in free variation with other allophones.

See also Ezh Voiceless postalveolar fricative Index of phonetics articles Voiceless retroflex fricative

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