The voiced palato-alveolar fricative or domed postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʒ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is Z. An alternative commonly used in linguistic works, particularly in older or American literature, is ž.

Features

Features of the voiced postalveolar fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is sibilant fricative, which means it is 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 palato-alveolar, that is, domed (partially palatalized) postalveolar, which means it is articulated with the front of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue bunched up ("domed") at the palate.
• 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.

In English

The voiced postalveolar fricative occurs in English, although in only a handful of words, and is the sound denoted by the letter 's' in treasure and the final sound of the word mirage. One of the very few minimal contrasts of the voiced and voiceless postalveolar fricatives (for some dialects only) is the pair of words allusion and Aleutian. It usually occurs medially, but may occur word-initially or word-finally in relatively recent borrowings from French.

In English the sound is labialized, [ʒʷ], although few transcriptions bother with this level of detail.

In other languages

The sound is more common in French, where it is represented by the letter j. The French consonant is labialized, [ʒʷ], as in English.

The sound is also notable in Rioplatense Spanish, spoken in Argentina and Uruguay, where the consonant ll takes on the sound.

It also occurs in Russian and Bulgarian as a realization of /ʐ/, represented by the letter Ж (zhe).

It also occurs in Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Serbian and, of course, in Latvian, where it is represented by the letter Žž.

It also occurs in Ido, represented by the letter J.

It also occurs in Esperanto, represented by the letter Ĵ.

It also occurs word-initially and word-medially in Ladino.

See also

• Ezh
• List of phonetics topics