Voiced alveolo-palatal fricative

The 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⟩), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is z\. It is the sibilant equivalent of the voiced palatal fricative, and as such it can be transcribed in IPA with ⟨ʝ˖⟩.

Voiced alveolo-palatal fricative
ʑ
IPA Number183
Audio sample
Encoding
Entity (decimal)ʑ
Unicode (hex)U+0291
X-SAMPAz\
Braille⠦ (braille pattern dots-236)⠵ (braille pattern dots-1356)

Features

alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives [ɕ, ʑ]

Features of the voiced alveolo-palatal fricative:

Occurrence

LanguageWordIPAMeaningNotes
Abkhazажьа[aˈʑa]'hare'See Abkhaz phonology
Adygheжьау[ʑaːw]'shadow'
CatalanEastern[1]ajut[ɐˈʑut̪]'help' (n.)See Catalan phonology
All dialectscaixmir[kä(ɪ̯)ʑˈmiɾ]'Cashmere'
ChineseJiangshan[ʑyœʔ]'ten'
Taiwanese Hokkien今仔日/kin-á-ji̍t[kɪn˧a˥ʑɪt˥]'today'
Czechživot[ʑɪvot]'life'See Czech phonology
EnglishGhana[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
Kabardianжьэ[ʑa]'mouth'
Lower Sorbian[3]źasety[ʑäs̪ɛt̪ɨ][stress?]'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'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
RomaniKalderash[11]ʒal[ʑal]'he/she/it goes'Realized as [d͡ʒ] in conservative dialects.
RomanianTransylvanian dialects[12]gea[ˈʑanə]'eyelash'Realized as [d͡ʒ] in standard Romanian. See Romanian phonology
RussianConservative 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
Sema[14]aji[à̠ʑì]'blood'Possible allophone of /ʒ/ before /i, e/; can be realized as [d͡ʑ ~ ʒ ~ d͡ʒ] instead.[14]
Serbo-CroatianCroatian[15]puž će[pûːʑ t͡ɕe̞]'the snail will'Allophone of /ʒ/ before /t͡ɕ, d͡ʑ/.[15] See Serbo-Croatian phonology
Some speakers of Montenegrinźenica[ʑȇ̞nit̻͡s̪a̠]'pupil'Phonemically /zj/ or, in some cases, /z/.
SpanishParaguayan[16]carro[ˈkaʑo]'car'Dialectal realization of /r/ and allophone of /ɾ/ after /t/.
TatarKazan dialect (standard Tatar)җан / can[ʑan]'soul'In Mishar Dialect, letter җ / c is [d͡ʒ].[17]
Uzbek[18][example needed]
XumiUpper[19][ʑɐ̝˦]'beer, wine'
Yi/yi[ʑi˧]'tobacco'

See also

Notes

References