Voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant

The voiceless palato-alveolar fricative or voiceless domed postalveolar fricative (IPA [ʃ]) is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages, including English. In English, it is usually represented in writing with ⟨sh⟩, as in ship.

Symbol

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ ʃ ⟩, the letter esh introduced by Isaac Pitman (not to be confused with the integral sign ⟨∫⟩). The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is S.

An alternative symbol is ⟨š⟩, an s with háček, which is used in the Americanist phonetic notation and the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, as well as in the scientific and ISO 9 transliterations of Cyrillic. It originated with the Czech alphabet of Jan Hus and was adopted in Gaj's Latin alphabet and other Latin alphabets of Slavic languages. It also features in the orthographies of many Baltic, Finno-Lappic, North American and African languages.

Features

Features of the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is sibilant fricative, which means it is generally produced by channeling air flow along a groove in the back of the tongue up to the place of articulation, at which point it is focused against the sharp edge of the nearly clenched 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 blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the front of the tongue bunched up ("domed") at the palate.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

In various languages, including English and French, it may have simultaneous lip rounding ([ʃʷ]), although this is usually not written down in technical transcriptions.

Occurrence

Classical Latin phonology did not have [ʃ]. It does occur in most of today's Latin-descended languages. For example the ⟨ch⟩ in French chanteur ('singer') is pronounced [ʃ] and is descended from Latin cantare pronounced [k]. The ⟨sc⟩ in Latin scientia ('science') indicated /sk/ but has changed to /ʃ/ in the Italian scienza.

The sound in Russian denoted by <ш> is commonly transcribed as a palato-alveolar fricative but is actually a laminal retroflex fricative.

See also

• List of phonetics topics
• Cedilla

References

Bibliography

• Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 25 (2): 90–94, doi:10.1017/S0025100300005223 
• Ladefoged, Peter (2005), Vowels and Consonants (Second ed.), Blackwell 
• Merrill, Elizabeth (2008), "Tilquiapan Zapotec", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 38 (1): 107–114 
• Rogers, Derek; d'Arcangeli, Luciana (2004), "Italian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (1): 117–121, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001628 
• Shosted, Ryan K.; Vakhtang, Chikovani (2006), "Standard Georgian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 36 (2): 255–264, doi:10.1017/S0025100306002659 
• Thelwall, Robin (1990), "Illustrations of the IPA: Arabic", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 20 (2): 37–41