Alveolo-palatal fricatives are a class of consonants in some oral languages. The consonants are sibilants, a variety of fricative. Their place of articulation is postalveolar. They differ in voicing.
The voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative and voiced alveolo-palatal fricative are written ⟨ɕ⟩ and ⟨ʑ⟩ in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Features of alveolo-palatal fricatives:[1]
IPA | Description | Example | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Language | Orthography | IPA | Meaning | ||
ɕ | Voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant | Mandarin | 小 (xiǎo) | [ɕiɑu˨˩˦] | small |
ʑ | Voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant | Polish | zioło | [ʑɔwɔ] | herb |