Voiced retroflex sibilant

Voiced retroflex sibilant
ʐ
IPA number	137
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʐ
Unicode (hex)	U+0290
X-SAMPA	z`
Kirshenbaum	z.
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The voiced retroflex sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʐ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is z`. Like all the retroflex consonants, the IPA symbol is formed by adding a rightward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of a z (the letter used for the corresponding alveolar consonant).

Some scholars transcribe the laminal variant of this sound as /ʒ/, even though it is not palatalized. In such cases the voiced palato-alveolar sibilant is transcribed /ʒʲ/.

Features

Features of the voiced retroflex 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 retroflex, which prototypically means it is articulated subapical (with the tip of the tongue curled up), but more generally, it means that it is postalveolar without being palatalized. That is, besides the prototypical sub-apical articulation, the tongue contact can be apical (pointed) or laminal (flat).

• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.

• 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.

Occurrence

In the following transcriptions, diacritics may be used to distinguish between apical [ʐ̺] and laminal [ʐ̻].

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Abkhaz		абжа	[ˈabʐa]	'half'	See Abkhaz phonology
Adyghe		жъы	[ʐ̻ə]	'old'	Laminal.
Chinese	Mandarin	肉/ròu	[ʐoʊ̯˥˩]	'meat'	May also be a retroflex approximant [ɻ]. See Mandarin phonology
Faroese		renn	[ʐɛn]	'run'
Italian	Marked accents of Emilia-Romagna[1]	caso	[ˈkäːʐo]	'case'	Apical;[1] may be [z̺ʲ] or [ʒ] instead.[1] It corresponds to [z] in standard Italian. See Italian phonology
Lower Sorbian[2][3]		Łužyca	[ˈwuʐɨt͡sa]	'Lusatia'
Mapudungun[4]		'rayen	[ʐɜˈjën]	'flower'	May be [ɻ] or [ɭ] instead.[4]
Marrithiyel	Marri Tjevin dialect	[wiˈɲaʐu]		'they are laughing'	Voicing is non-contrastive.
Pashto	Southern dialect	تږى‎	[ˈtəʐai]	'thirsty'	See Pashto phonology
Polish	Standard[5]	żona	[ˈʐ̻ɔn̪ä]	'wife'	Also represented by ⟨rz⟩ and when written so, it can be instead pronounced as the raised alveolar non-sonorant trill by few speakers.[6] It is transcribed as /ʒ/ by most Polish scholars. See Polish phonology
	Southeastern Cuyavian dialects[7]	zapłacił	[ʐäˈpwät͡ɕiw]	'he paid'	Some speakers. It's a result of hypercorrecting the more popular merger of /ʐ/ and /z/ into [z].
	Suwałki dialect[8]
Russian[5]		жена	[ʐɨ̞ˈna]	'wife'	See Russian phonology
Serbo-Croatian		жут / žut	[ʐûːt̪]	'yellow'	Laminal. It may be palato-alveolar instead, depending on the dialect. See Serbo-Croatian phonology
Slovak[9]		žaba	[ˈʐäbä]	'frog'
Tilquiapan Zapotec[10]		?	[ʐan]	'bottom'
Torwali[11]		?	[ʂuʐ]	'straight'
Ubykh		[ʐa]		'firewood'	See Ubykh phonology
Upper Sorbian	Some dialects[12][13]				Used in dialects spoken in villages north of Hoyerswerda; corresponds to [ʒ] in standard language.[2] See Upper Sorbian phonology
Vietnamese	Southern dialects	rô	[ʐow]	'diamond'	See Vietnamese phonology
Yi		ꏜ ry	[ʐʐ̩˧]	'grass'

See also

• Index of phonetics articles

References

Bibliography