Voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative

^{Sound sample}
IPA – text	ɕ
IPA – image
entity	ɕ
X-SAMPA	`s\`
Kirshenbaum

The voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɕ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is s\.

1 Features
2 In English
3 In other languages
4 See also

Features

Features of the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative:

Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
Its place of articulation is alveolo-palatal which means it is articulated with the tip of the tongue between the alveolar ridge and the palate, but closer to the palate than for postalveolar consonants.
Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

In English

The voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative does not occur in English, and many English speakers have difficulty distinguishing it from ʃ or ç.

In other languages

Belarusian

German

In some dialects of German, particularly those spoken in the Rhineland, the sound Germans know as ich-Laut (in most dialects, a voiceless palatal fricative) is realized as [ɕ]. In those dialects, the voiced and voiceless alveolo-palatal fricatives are allophones.

Hungarian

Japanese

In Japanese, the voiceless alveolar fricative gets assimilated to the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative when it is followed by [i] or [j]: し (or シ) is pronounced [ɕi] instead of [si], and is therefore Romanized as shi instead of si.

Korean

Mandarin

The voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative occurs in Mandarin when followed by [i], [j], or [y], and is represented by x in pinyin. This sound is also found in combination with [t] in j and q.