Talk:Voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative

message: I've tried to fix the representation of Pinyin x. This dorso-palatal monstrosity is far from a simple . It is a coarticulation of two fricatives, one that varies (between different idio- or perhaps dialects, I don't know) between [ç] and the midpoint between [ç] and [x], and another that varies between  and perhaps . In addition, it has a [j]-like offglide, like many dorso-palatal consonants (for example Italian gn and gl). So I suspect the most correct IPA representation could be  with the tie bar extending over all three.
I have also forced Internet Explorer to use Arial Unicode MS to display the characters that would otherwise be shown as squares (both in the article and this page). The trick is to write
 { { I P A |   } }
around the symbols (or around the [] or //).
Apart from that I have added the American example. It goes without saying that I'd appreciate it if a native speaker elaborated that!
Addition 15:43: I have added Polish, the poster child for . I will try to add Belorussian next. Does someone know whether Italian sci is  in at least some dialects?
David Marjanović david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at 15:23 CET-summertime 2005/9/10
:Where are you getting this? First of all, doubly articulated fricatives are not known to occur in any language. They have been claimed several times, but always turn out to be something else when investigated.
::I don't know how else to explain how it sounds. Do you have Skype?
::(And for that matter I doubt that the sounds in question occur in any other language... x seems to exist in one Swedish dialect as a realization of , but here I'm judging merely from written descriptions in Wikipedia.)
:Secondly, Ladefoged made palatograms and several other measurements of  from three Mandarin speakers.
::Maybe they didn't come from the same region as the speakers on the tapes of the Chinese textbooks I've used, and as at least some of the Chinese I've heard speak in Vienna's subway, and on TV... or they simply weren't speaking pure Pǔtōnghuà. "Mandarin" is a rather loose term.
:Third, the occlusion in Mandarin q is coronal, not dorsal, even in the third speaker.
::Difficult to explain how this could sound like what I hear.
:That is, it should be transcribed as a [t] with some diacritic. Ladefoged has . [c] would mean that the tip/blade of the tongue was not used.
::Indeed not. The tip of the tongue touches the lower alveoli in x, q and j. This is even mentioned in writing in one of my textbooks (otherwise they're all not very exact on phonetics).
:Fourth, the tie bar needs to go between the segments, not after them.
::Sorry, I made it so that it looks convincing in Arial Unicode MS, which is known to have a bug there.
:Also, the [j] should be outside the tie bar; it is physically impossible to pronounce it within (unlike a double fricative, which is merely very difficult).  kwami 18:57, 2005 September 10 (UTC)
::In addition to being simultaneous [ç] and , it has a [j]-like offglide like French gn, which I would write  with a tie-bar (and feel bad about it because the j probably needs some sophisticated diacritic). So the transcription of x should contain two tie-bars, one above the other and spanning over both the first tie-bar and the j.
:P.S. If an American pronounced estimate with a , I would think they had a speach defect. It would sound like a lithp. kwami 19:11, 2005 September 10 (UTC)
::It's not a true , it's somewhere between that and . You know how Bush says "misundreshtmate", don't you?
::David 00:18 CET-summertime 2005/9/27
:::It's not a lisp at all. A lisp would be the tl in Nahuatl. It's an apical s. It's found in Spanish (that's why people claim the Spanish lisp), Greek and Dutch. --2.245.215.41 (talk) 14:01, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Mandarin

message: I have reason to believe that the sound that is pronounced in the ogg file (sound sample) approaches a Voiceless postalveolar fricative consonant, rather than a Voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative. It would be greatly appreciated if a phonetician would look over this article.Danielsavoiu 11:32, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, the sound file is garbage. Who will corect that? The correct pronunciation can be found here: https://haakonkrohn.com/ipa/index.html#current 82.77.245.21 (talk) 11:08, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sound file accuracy 

message: The current article reads: In Russian, щ represents /ɕɕ/ or /ɕtɕ/ which I think is very vague and inexact. AFAICS modern Russian does not anymore use the /ɕtɕ/ variant at all - please prove me wrong: /ɕɕ/ everywhere - with one exception: to the vegetable soup, Germans say Borschtsch (Russian Борщ), using the older transliteration. -andy 80.129.116.55 00:20, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As a native speaker I must admit: it's really so: only /ɕɕ/ everywhere. Even in Борщ. --Koryakov Yuri 22:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

text: As a non-native I was taught /ɕtɕ/ (transcribed 'shch', as though it were Polish 'szcz'), only to find that native Russian-speakers always corrected me, saying it should be /ɕɕ/ - the classic example being the 'other Russian soup' щи - not 'shchi' but 'shhi'.213.127.210.95 (talk) 21:53, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it's a classic Polish (maybe not only Polish) mispronunciation of Russian . Sol505000 (talk) 21:25, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Russian: щ sound 

message: I have just listened to the example in infobox and to Japanese example below in the list and must say they are different sounds. Japanese "shi" sounds quite like Russian si/си [sʲi] not like schchi/щи [ɕɕi], that is it's rather a palatalized "s" than real alveolo-palatal. Isn't it? --Koryakov Yuri 22:36, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Japanese 

message: The consonant template lists this as a co-articulated fricative, but I can hardly find any information concerning its co-articulated nature. I actually think it seems to be a coarticulation between /s/ and ʂ/ʃ, but perhaps this is marred from the perspective of the Singapore Mandarin dialect, so any opinions? Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 07:29, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's essentially a palatalized [ʃ]. Co-articulation does not necessarily refer to two fricativ articulations. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 22:17, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  co-articulated 

message: I have removed the stress mark found in [ɕiˈd͡ʑaŋ]. Please see: []  Finitoultero (talk) 00:51, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of Korean Stress Mark [ɕid͡ʑaŋ] 

message: The article says articulated with the front of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, but the illustration shows the tip of the tongue close to the lower teeth. --Espoo (talk) 07:49, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Response: In Phonetics, the tongue "front" is what most people would consider to be the middle. The tongue tip is called just that- the tip.  Confusing, yes, I know! For this reason sometimes the tongue "front" is called the tongue center. See this graphic: http://classes.design.ucla.edu/Spring08/150B/images/yoko_ohama/080515-4.png Larkale07 (talk) 00:06, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  incorrect illustration? 

message: The sound file of this sound and that of voiceless postalveolar fricative sound the same.
* ʃ  
* ɕ  
:— Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.211.122.65 (talk • contribs) 
::Yes, these are similar sounds, so they should sound similar.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 21:52, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: What about the audio samples here?  Now can you hear the difference?  I think those ones are better. 208.104.45.20 (talk) 07:59, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sound file 

message: The Danish sjæl and the Swedish kjol can not both be a correct example, as the initial sounds are not pronounced the same.--EvenT (talk) 20:49, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Danish phonology seems to suggest that sj would be .  There also seems to be dialectal variation in the pronunciation of kj.  — Æµ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 21:04, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: In Danish it's  for  and  for . Peter238 (talk) 20:41, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, the Swedish kjol is correct but Danish sjæl is not. At least not in any version I have ever heard. These are sounds that non-native speakers often have trouble distinguishing, so I suspect that's the problem here. Wikipedia's phonology articles unfortunately tend to be inconsistend and contradictory, so just copying between them is not enough or we'll just spread misconceptions. This article needs to be edited by a native Danish speaker.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.225.76.127 (talk) 14:49, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it does not. Grønnum states clearly that the sounds in question are  for  and  for . We go by reliable, reputable sources - see WP:RS. Sol505000 (talk) 21:33, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  sjæl and kjol 

message: I think there should be a mention of how this is different from [ʃ]. The sounds are just so similar, and the audience is English speakers which are familiar with [ʃ] and so often think [ɕ] and [ʃ] are the same sound. Heck, most English approximations for [ɕ] use "sh".
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some people with sibilance problems use [ɕ] for /ʃ/. — trlkly 20:39, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The difference is that the body of the tongue is more raised than in . I'll add that in a moment. Peter238 (talk) 20:41, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, AND, in addition to that, there's usually little to no lip rounding on , which adds to the overall 'softness' of the sound. Sol505000 (talk) 22:09, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should be contrast with ʃ 

message: The IPA rendering of the first vowel as <æ> (which is the sound in English 'black') - [ˈɕːæsʲtʲjə] - is surely wrong, since that sound doesn't exist in standard Russian, or as far as I know in any form of Russian.213.127.210.95 (talk) 21:46, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: [æ] is indeed correct. A soft consonant in Russian affects the following vowel. This is something native speakers usually don't perceive. --Explosivo (talk) 23:42, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  счастье 

message: The voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant is stated to have a laminal tongue shape? I'm curious if there is an apical variant, does anyone know?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.59.159.233 (talk) 21:26, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: A constriction at both the alveolar ridge and the hard palate must inevitably involve a wide portion of the tongue, so no, I don't think there could be an apical variant. Nardog (talk) 06:05, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

text: An 'apical ' is actually , so they sound nothing like each other. Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:19, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: 'Nothing like each other' is a rather big exaggeration. To a speaker of a language with just one postalveolar sibilant, any -like sibilant sounds like the same sound, more or less. And things get a lot more complicated when the alleged  in the language are retracted, as in Dutch or Danish. Sol505000 (talk) 21:22, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Laminal Vs Apical 

message: stands for any voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative. It can be labialized, aspirated, long, short or partially voiced at the end or at the beginning. It may be weakly fricated or strongly fricated. The fact that  in the traditional RP pronunciation of tuesday doesn't fit your idea of how  sounds like (or should sound like, which is even worse [no offense]) doesn't mean that the sound is not correctly described as a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative. It's probably more weakly fricated than, say, Polish or Dutch  and probably has some voicing at the end. In the German tradition, it'd probably be transcribed , with  denoting a voiceless lenis fricative. But how can it really be lenis if it is the only alveolo-palatal fricative in the dialect? For a consonant to be lenis, there has to be a fortis (fully voiceless and more strongly fricated) counterpart, no? Phonologically, it is an approximant that is phonetically devoiced and raised (=turned into a fricative) by the preceding fortis/voiceless alveolar stop. Plus,  is not an official way to transcribe a lenis  (rather, it's just a way of transcribing a  without a full voicing, which may or may not be synonymous with the canonical IPA value of the symbol , which denotes a fully voiceless fricative). A more standard way of transcribing that is probably  (with the lowering diacritic, indicating a decreased amount of friction in comparison with the canonical IPA value of the symbol ). But again, none of that is in the source. Sol505000 (talk) 22:24, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  In Received Pronunciation