Voiced alveolo-palatal fricative

IPA number 183

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Entity (decimal) ʑ

Unicode (hex) U+0291

X-SAMPA z\

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A voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʑ⟩ (⟨z⟩, plus the curl also found in its voiceless counterpart ⟨ɕ⟩). It is the sibilant equivalent of the voiced palatal fricative.

Features

Features of a voiced alveolo-palatal fricative:

Its manner of articulation is sibilant (a subclass of fricatives and affricates), which means it is generally produced with a higher-frequency turbulence. Sibilants may be articulated with various tongue shapes and degrees of palatalization, depending on their place of articulation.
Its place of articulation is alveolo-palatal. This means that:
- The articulation is postalveolar and laminal, meaning that the tongue blade contacts the roof of the mouth in the area behind the alveolar ridge (the gum line). Some phoneticians instead argue that the articulation is pre-palatal and dorsal, meaning that the back of the tongue (the dorsum) is raised toward the front of the hard palate.
- It is heavily palatalized, meaning that the middle of the tongue is bowed and raised towards the hard palate.
Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
It is an oral consonant, which means that air is not allowed to escape through the nose.
It is a median consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream down the midline of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air only with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Abkhaz		ажьа	[aˈʑa]	'hare'	See Abkhaz phonology
Adyghe		жьау	[ʑaːw]	'shadow'
Catalan	Eastern^[1]	ajut	[əˈʑut̪]	'help' (n.)	See Catalan phonology
Catalan	All dialects	peix blau	[ˈpe(j)ʑ ˈbɫɑw]	'blue fish'	See Catalan phonology
Chinese	Jiangshan	十	[ʑyœʔ]	'ten'
Chinese	Taiwanese Hokkien	今仔日/kin-á-ji̍t	[kɪn˧a˥ʑɪt˥]	'today'
Czech		život	[ʑɪvot]	'life'	See Czech phonology
English	Ghana^[2]	vision	[ˈviʑin]	'vision'	Educated speakers may use [ʒ], which this phoneme corresponds to in other dialects.^[2]
Japanese		火事/kaji	[kaʑi]	'fire'	Found in free variation with [d͡ʑ] between vowels. See Japanese phonology
Kabardian		жьэ	[ʑa]	'mouth'
Lower Sorbian^[3]		źasety	[ʑäs̪ɛt̪ɨ]	'tenth'
Luxembourgish^[4]		héijen	[ˈhɜ̝ɪ̯ʑən]	'high'	Allophone of /ʁ/ after phonologically front vowels; some speakers merge it with [ʒ]. Occurs in only a few words.^[4] See Luxembourgish phonology
Pa Na		[ʑu˧˥]		'small'
Polish^[5]		źrebię	[ˈʑrɛbjɛ]	'foal'	Also denoted by the digraph ⟨zi⟩. See Polish phonology
Portuguese^[6]^[7]^[8]		magia	[maˈʑi.ɐ]	'magic'	Also described as palato-alveolar [ʒ].^[9]^[10] See Portuguese phonology
Romani	Kalderash^[11]	ʒal	[ʑal]	'he/she/it goes'	Realized as [d͡ʒ] in conservative dialects.
Romanian	Transylvanian dialects^[12]	geană	[ˈʑanə]	'eyelash'	Realized as [d͡ʒ] in standard Romanian. See Romanian phonology
Russian	Conservative Moscow Standard^[13]	позже	[poʑːe]	'later'	Somewhat obsolete in many words, in which most speakers realize it as hard [ʐː].^[13] Present only in a few words, usually written ⟨жж⟩ or ⟨зж⟩. See Russian phonology
Slovak	Eastern slovak dialects	zima	[ɕima]	'winter'	Sometimes it is considered only as allophone of the phoneme /z/ before front vowels (i, e). See Slovak phonology.
Sema^[14]		aji	[à̠ʑì]	'blood'	Possible allophone of /ʒ/ before /i, e/; can be realized as [d͡ʑ ~ ʒ ~ d͡ʒ] instead.^[14]
Serbo-Croatian	Serbian and Croatian^[15]	puž će	[pûːʑ t͡ɕe̞]	'the snail will'	Allophone of /ʒ/ before /t͡ɕ, d͡ʑ/.^[15] See Serbo-Croatian phonology
Serbo-Croatian	Some speakers of Montenegrin	źenica/з́еница	[ʑȇ̞nit̻͡s̪a̠]	'pupil'	Phonemically /zj/ or, in some cases, /z/.
Spanish	Paraguayan^[16]	carro	[ˈkaʑo]	'car'	Non-standard, dialectal realization of /r/ and allophone of /ɾ/ after /t/.
Tatar	Kazan dialect (standard Tatar)	җан / can	[ʑan]	'soul'	In Mishar Dialect, letter җ / c is [d͡ʒ].^[17]
Uzbek^[18]
Xumi	Upper^[19]	[ʑɐ̝˦]		'beer, wine'
Yi		ꑳ/yi	[ʑi˧]	'tobacco'

Notes

Recasens & Espinosa (2007:145, 167)
Huber (2004:859)
Zygis (2003:180–181)
Gilles & Trouvain (2013), pp. 67–68.
Jassem (2003:103)
Mateus & d'Andrade (2000)
Silva (2003:32)
Guimarães (2004)
Cruz-Ferreira (1995:91)
Medina (2010)
Boretzky & Igla (1994:XVII)
Pop (1938), p. 30.
Yanushevskaya & Bunčić (2015:224)
Teo (2014:23)
Landau et al. (1999:68)
"Catálogo de voces hispánicas: Paraguay, Asunción". Instituto Cervantes (in Spanish). Retrieved 18 January 2020.
Leitzinger, Antero: Mishäärit – Suomen vanha islamilainen yhteisö. Helsinki: Kirja-Leitzinger, 1996. ISBN 952-9752-08-3. (p. 45)
Sjoberg (1963:11)
Chirkova, Chen & Kocjančič Antolík (2013:383)

References

Boretzky, Nobert; Igla, Birgit (1994), Wörterbuch Romani-Deutsch-Englisch für den südosteuropäischen Raum : mit einer Grammatik der Dialektvarianten, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, ISBN 3-447-03459-9
Chirkova, Katia; Chen, Yiya; Kocjančič Antolík, Tanja (2013), "Xumi, Part 2: Upper Xumi, the Variety of the Upper Reaches of the Shuiluo River" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 43 (3): 381–396, doi:10.1017/S0025100313000169
Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 25 (2): 90–94, doi:10.1017/S0025100300005223, S2CID 249414876
Gilles, Peter; Trouvain, Jürgen (2013), "Luxembourgish" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 43 (1): 67–74, doi:10.1017/S0025100312000278
Guimarães, Daniela (2004), Seqüências de (Sibilante + Africada Alveopalatal) no Português Falado em Belo Horizonte (PDF), Belo Horizonte: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-04-07, retrieved 2014-04-04
Huber, Magnus (2004), "Ghanaian English: phonology", in Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English, vol. 1: Phonology, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 842–865, ISBN 3-11-017532-0
Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33 (1): 103–107, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001191
Landau, Ernestina; Lončarić, Mijo; Horga, Damir; Škarić, Ivo (1999), "Croatian", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 66–69, ISBN 0-521-65236-7
Mateus, Maria Helena; d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000), The Phonology of Portuguese, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-823581-X
Medina, Flávio (2010), Análise Acústica de Sequências de Fricativas Seguidas de [i] Produzidas por Japoneses Aprendizes de Português Brasileiro (PDF), Anais do IX Encontro do CELSUL Palhoça, SC, Palhoça: Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina, archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-09-23, retrieved 2014-12-06
Pop, Sever (1938), Micul Atlas Linguistic Român, Muzeul Limbii Române Cluj
Recasens, Daniel; Espinosa, Aina (2007), "An electropalatographic and acoustic study of affricates and fricatives in two Catalan dialects" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37 (2): 143–172, doi:10.1017/S0025100306002829, S2CID 14275190, archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-11-22, retrieved 2013-04-16
Silva, Thaïs Cristófaro (2003), Fonética e Fonologia do Português: Roteiro de Estudos e Guia de Exercícios (7th ed.), São Paulo: Contexto, ISBN 85-7244-102-6
Sjoberg, Andrée F. (1963), Uzbek Structural Grammar, Uralic and Altaic Series, vol. 18, Bloomington: Indiana University
Teo, Amos B. (2014), A phonological and phonetic description of Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland (PDF), Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics, ISBN 978-1-922185-10-5
Yanushevskaya, Irena; Bunčić, Daniel (2015), "Russian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 45 (2): 221–228, doi:10.1017/S0025100314000395
Zygis, Marzena (2003), "Phonetic and Phonological Aspects of Slavic Sibilant Fricatives", ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 3: 175–213, doi:10.21248/zaspil.32.2003.191

External links

List of languages with [ʑ] on PHOIBLE