Voiced palatal fricative

A voiced palatal fricative is a special sound that some languages use when people speak. It is a type of consonantal sound. The symbol that stands 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 of the many languages that people have studied. In languages like Dutch, Kabyle, Margi, Modern Greek, and Scottish Gaelic, this sound is used in words on its own, and 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 used in some languages. It is made by narrowing the airflow in the mouth, which creates a rough, hissing sound. This sound is produced with the middle or back part of the tongue raised toward the roof of the mouth. When making this sound, the voice box vibrations are used, and air flows only through the mouth, not the 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 slightly 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.