Voiceless retroflex fricative Totally Explained

Everything about The Voiceless Retroflex Fricative totally explained

The voiceless retroflex fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʂ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is s`. Like all the retroflex consonants, the IPA symbol is formed by adding a rightward pointing hook extending from the bottom of the symbol used for the equivalent alveolar consonant, in this case the voiceless alveolar fricative which has the symbol s. The IPA symbol is thus a lowercase letter s with a rightward tail protruding from the lower left of the letter. Compare s and ʂ. Although a distinction can be made between laminal, apical, and sub-apical articulations, no language makes such a contrast.

Features

Features of the voiceless retroflex fricative:

Its manner of articulation is sibilant fricative, which means it's produced by directing air flow through a groove in the tongue at the place of articulation and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.
Its place of articulation is retroflex, which prototypically means it's articulated with the tip of the tongue curled up, but more generally means that it's postalveolar without being palatalized. That is, besides the prototypical sub-apical (curled) articulation, the tongue contact can be apical (pointed) or laminal (flat).
Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it's 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's 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's articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Occurrence

In the following transcriptions, diacritics may be used to distinguish between apical [ʂ̺] and laminal [ʂ̻].

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Abkhaz		амш	[amʂ]	'day'	See Abkhaz phonology
Chinese	Mandarin	石/shí	[ʂ̠ɻ̩˧˥]	'stone'	See Standard Mandarin
Faroese		fýrs	[fʊʂ]	'eighty'
Malayalam		കഷ്ടി	[käʂʈi]	'scarce'
Norwegian		forsamling	[fɔʂɑmːlɪŋ]	'meeting/gathering'	See Norwegian phonology
Pashto		ښار	[ʂ̠ɑr]	'city'
Polish		szum		'rustle'	See Polish phonology
Russian		шут	[ʂut̪]	'fool'	See Russian phonology
Swedish		fors	[fɔʂ]	'stream/waterfall'	See Swedish phonology
Telugu		అభిలాషి	[ʌbʱilaːʂi]	'person who wishes'
Ubykh		[ʂ̺a]		'head'	See Ubykh phonology
Vietnamese	Saigon dialect	số	[ʂ̺o˧˥]	'number'	See Vietnamese phonology

Further Information

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