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 , 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 , the voiceless alveolar fricative.

Palatal fricatives are rare phonemes and only 5% of the world's languages have as a phoneme.^[1] However, it also tends to occur as an allophone of or in the vicinity of front vowels, and many English dialects are no exception.

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 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.

Occurrence

See also

• List of phonetics topics

Notes

References

als:Stimmloser palataler Frikativ bn:???? ?????? ????????? br:Kensonenn staon dre daravat divouezh cs:Nezn?lá palatální frikativa de:Stimmloser palataler Frikativ fr:Consonne fricative palatale sourde ko:?? ??? ??? it:Fricativa palatale sorda ja:???????? pl:Spó?g?oska szczelinowa podniebienna bezd?wi?czna ro:Consoan? fricativ? palatal? surd? sv:Tonlös palatal frikativa wa:Ixh-låte