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Voiceless retroflex fricative

Consonantal sound represented by ⟨ʂ⟩ in IPA

Summary

Consonantal sound represented by ⟨ʂ⟩ in IPA

Field	Value
ipa symbol	ʂ
ipa number	136
decimal1	642
x-sampa	s`
braille	256
braille2	234
imagefile	IPA Unicode 0x0282.svg

|x-sampa=s`

A voiceless 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 which is a Latin letter s combined with a retroflex hook. Like all the retroflex consonants, the IPA letter is formed by adding a rightward-pointing hook to the bottom of (the letter used for the corresponding alveolar consonant). A distinction can be made between laminal, apical, and sub-apical articulations. Only one language, Toda, appears to have more than one voiceless retroflex sibilant, and it distinguishes subapical palatal from apical postalveolar retroflex sibilants; that is, both the tongue articulation and the place of contact on the roof of the mouth are different.

Features

Schematic mid-sagittal section

Features of a voiceless retroflex fricative:

Occurrence

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

The commonality of cross-linguistically is 6% in a phonological analysis of 2155 languages.

Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Abkhaz	амш / ab		'day'	See Abkhaz phonology
Adyghe	пшъашъэ / پصاصە / ady		'girl'	Laminal.
Chinese	Mandarin	石 / cmn		'stone'
Emilian-Romagnol	Romagnol	sé		'yes'
English	General American	worship		'worship'
Faroese	fýrs		'eighty'
Hindustani	Hindi	कष्ट / hi		'trouble'
Hmong	/ hmn		'to write'
Kannada	ಕಷ್ಟ / kn		'difficult'	Only in loanwords. See Kannada phonology.
Khanty	Most northern dialects	шаш / kca		'knee'
Kyrgyz	Ош / hmn		'Osh'	Allophone of . See Kyrgyz phonology
Lower Sorbian	glažk		'glass'
Malayalam	കഷ്ടം / ml		'difficult'	Only occurs in loanwords. See Malayalam phonology
Mapudungun	trukur		'fog'	Possible allophone of in post-nuclear position.
Marathi	ऋषी / mr		'sage'	See Marathi phonology
Nepali	षष्ठी / ne		'Shashthi (day)'	Allophone of in neighbourhood of retroflex consonants. See Nepali phonology
Norwegian	karsk		'healthy'	Allophone of the sequence in many dialects, including Urban East Norwegian. See Norwegian phonology
Oʼodham	Cuk Ṣon		'Tucson'	Apical.
Pashto	Southern dialect	ښودل / ps		'to show'
Polish	Hamann	2004	p=65}}	szum	'rustle'
Southeastern Cuyavian dialects	schowali		'they hid'	Some speakers. It's a result of hypercorrecting the more popular merger of and into (see szadzenie).
Suwałki dialect
Romanian	Moldavian dialects	șură		'barn'
Transylvanian dialects
Russian	шут / ru		'jester'	See Russian phonology
Serbo-Croatian	šal / шал		'scarf'	Typically transcribed as . See Serbo-Croatian phonology
Slovak	šatka		'kerchief'
Swedish	fors		'rapids'	Allophone of the sequence in many dialects, including Central Standard Swedish. See Swedish phonology
Tamil	கஷ்டம் / ta		'difficult'	Only occurs in loanwords, often replaced with . See Tamil phonology
Telugu	కష్టం / te	Only occurs in loanwords. See Telugu phonology
Toda			'(clan name)'	Subapical, contrasts .
Torwali	ݜیݜ / trw		'thin rope'
Ubykh			'head'	See Ubykh phonology
Ukrainian	шахи / uk		'chess'	See Ukrainian phonology
Upper Sorbian	Some dialects		—	—
Vietnamese	Southern dialects	sữa		'milk'
Yi	ꏂ / ii		'gold'
Yurok	segep		'coyote'
Zapotec	Tilquiapan		—	—

Voiceless retroflex non-sibilant fricative

Features

Features of a voiceless retroflex non-sibilant fricative:

Occurrence

Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Ormuri	Kaniguram dialect	suř

Voiceless retroflex approximant

Some scholars also posit the voiceless retroflex approximant distinct from the fricative. The approximant may be represented in the IPA as .

Language	Word	Meaning	Notes
Angami	ɻ̥ə³		Contrasts with
Chokri		In free variation with ; contrasts with
Faroese	bert	'only'	Devoiced approximant allophone of . See Faroese phonology

Notes

References

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References

Phoible.org. (2018). PHOIBLE Online - Segments. [online] Available at: https://phoible.org/parameters.
{{harvp. Šewc-Schuster. 1984
{{harvp. Hamann. 2004
Karaś, Halina. "Gwary polskie - Frykatywne rż (ř)".
Taras, Barbara. "Gwary polskie - Gwara regionu".
Karaś, Halina. "Gwary polskie - Szadzenie".
"Yurok consonants". UC Berkeley.
Novák, Ľubomír. (2013). "Problem of Archaism and Innovation in the Eastern Iranian Languages". Charles University.
Efimov, V. A.. (2011). "The Ormuri Language in Past and Present". Forum for Language Initiatives.
(Fall 1993). "Phonetic structures of Khonoma Angami". Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area.
(Fall 2001). "Chokri (Phek Dialect): Phonetics and Phonology". Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area.

Wikipedia Source

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fricative-consonants retroflex-consonants pulmonic-consonants voiceless-oral-consonants median-consonants voiceless-approximants

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