Voiced palatal fricative

A voiced palatal fricative is a special sound used in some languages when people speak. It is a type of consonantal sound. The symbol for this sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet, a special alphabet for showing sounds, is ⟨ʝ⟩, which looks like a j with a crossed tail.

This sound is not very common. It only happens in a few languages. In languages like Dutch, Kabyle, Margi, Modern Greek, and Scottish Gaelic, this sound is used in words. It also appears in other languages because of how sounds change in speech.

To make this sound, you put the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth behind your upper front teeth. Then, while breathing out, you bring your tongue close to the roof of your mouth to make a friction-like sound, similar to the "s" sound in the English word measure.

Features

The voiced palatal fricative is a special sound found in some languages. To make this sound, you narrow the airflow in your mouth, creating a rough, hissing noise. You do this by raising the middle or back part of your tongue toward the roof of your mouth. When you make this sound, your voice box vibrates, and the air flows only through your mouth, not your nose.

Occurrence

This section lists languages that use the voiced palatal fricative sound. The table shows where this sound appears in different languages around the world.

Post-palatal

Some languages have a sound called a voiced post-palatal or pre-velar fricative. This sound is made a little further back in the mouth than the usual voiced palatal fricative, but not as far back as another sound called the voiced velar fricative. There is no special symbol for this sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet, but it can be written in a few different ways.

This sound is made by narrowing the airflow in the mouth to create a rough sound. It is made between the position of palatal sounds and velar sounds. The vocal cords vibrate when making this sound, and air is pushed out through the mouth, not the nose. The sound is made by directing the air down the middle of the tongue.