Voiceless palatal fricative - Definition and Overview

IPA - Unicode	ç
IPA - image
X-SAMPA	C
Kirshenbaum	C
Sound sample

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, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is C. The symbol ç is the letter c with a cedilla, as used to spell French words like façade, although the sound represented by the letter ç in either French or English orthography is not a voiceless palatal fricative, but simply [s], the voiceless alveolar fricative. Features of this consonant:

• 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 against the hard 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.

In English

In some dialects of English, the sequence /hj/ is sometimes realized as the voiceless palatal fricative, via coalescence, a type of assimilation. For example, human (/ˈhjumən/ might be realized as [ˈçumən]). However, there are no minimal pairs for /hj/ and /ç/, so the voiceless palatal fricative is not a separate phoneme in English.

In other languages

German

German has the voiceless palatal fricative as a phoneme, and it is denoted by "ch", as in ich /ɪç/ (the pronoun I). This is the sound represented by "ch" when it follows "e", "i", "ä", "ö", "ü", the diphthongs "eu" or "äu", or the consonants "l", "n" or "r". The sound represented by "ch" following "a", "o", "u", or the diphthong "au" is a different consonant, the voiceless velar fricative.

German has both aspirated and plain [ç], but they are allophones. Word-final [ç], as in ich, is always aspirated. When [ç] is followed by another consonant, as in möchte, it is always unaspirated.