Voiced alveolo-palatal fricative

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.

Voiced alveolo-palatal fricative
ʑ
IPA number	183
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʑ
Unicode (hex)	U+0291
X-SAMPA	z\
Braille
Image

Features

Features of a voiced alveolo-palatal fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is sibilant fricative, which means it is generally produced by channeling air flow along a groove in the back of the tongue up to the place of articulation, at which point it is focused against the sharp edge of the nearly clenched teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is alveolo-palatal. This means that:
  • Its place of articulation is postalveolar, meaning that the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth in the area behind the alveolar ridge (the gum line).
  • Its tongue shape is laminal, meaning that it is the tongue blade that contacts the roof of the mouth.
  • 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	ajut	[əˈʑut̪]	'help' (n.)	See Catalan phonology
	All dialects	peix blau	[ˈpe(j)ʑ ˈbɫɑw]	'blue fish'
Chinese	Jiangshan	十	[ʑyœʔ]	'ten'
	Taiwanese Hokkien	今仔日/kin-á-ji̍t	[kɪn˧a˥ʑɪt˥]	'today'
Czech		život	[ʑɪvot]	'life'	See Czech phonology
English	Ghana	vision	[ˈviʑin]	'vision'	Educated speakers may use [ʒ], which this phoneme corresponds to in other dialects.
Japanese		火事/kaji	[kaʑi]	'fire'	Found in free variation with [d͡ʑ] between vowels. See Japanese phonology
Kabardian		жьэ	[ʑa]	'mouth'
Lower Sorbian		źasety	[ʑäs̪ɛt̪ɨ]^[stress?]	'tenth'
Luxembourgish		héijen	[ˈhɜ̝ɪ̯ʑən]	'high'	Allophone of /ʁ/ after phonologically front vowels; some speakers merge it with [ʒ]. Occurs in only a few words. See Luxembourgish phonology
Pa Na		[ʑu˧˥]		'small'
Polish		źrebię		'foal'	Also denoted by the digraph ⟨zi⟩. See Polish phonology
Portuguese		magia	[maˈʑi.ɐ]	'magic'	Also described as palato-alveolar [ʒ]. See Portuguese phonology
Romani	Kalderash	ʒal	[ʑal]	'he/she/it goes'	Realized as [d͡ʒ] in conservative dialects.
Romanian	Transylvanian dialects	geană	[ˈʑanə]	'eyelash'	Realized as [d͡ʒ] in standard Romanian. See Romanian phonology
Russian	Conservative Moscow Standard	позже	[poʑːe]	'later'	Somewhat obsolete in many words, in which most speakers realize it as hard [ʐː]. Present only in a few words, usually written ⟨жж⟩ or ⟨зж⟩. See Russian phonology
Sema		aji	[à̠ʑì]	'blood'	Possible allophone of /ʒ/ before /i, e/; can be realized as [d͡ʑ ~ ʒ ~ d͡ʒ] instead.
Serbo-Croatian	Serbian and Croatian	puž će	[pûːʑ t͡ɕe̞]	'the snail will'	Allophone of /ʒ/ before /t͡ɕ, d͡ʑ/. See Serbo-Croatian phonology
	Some speakers of Montenegrin	źenica/з́еница	[ʑȇ̞nit̻͡s̪a̠]	'pupil'	Phonemically /zj/ or, in some cases, /z/.
Spanish	Paraguayan	carro	[ˈkaʑo]	'car'	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].
Uzbek		^[example needed]
Xumi	Upper	[ʑɐ̝˦]		'beer, wine'
Yi		ꑳ/yi	[ʑi˧]	'tobacco'

See also

• Index of phonetics articles