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 subapical articulations.
Features
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.Phoible.org. (2018). PHOIBLE Online - Segments. [online] Available at: https://phoible.org/parameters.
Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Abkhaz / 'day' See Abkhaz phonology Adyghe / / 'girl' Laminal. Chinese Mandarin / 'stone' Apical. See Mandarin phonology Emilian-Romagnol Romagnol 'yes' Apical; may be or instead. English General American worship 'worship' Allophone of after . Faroese 'eighty' Hindustani Hindi / 'trouble' See Hindi phonology Hmong / 'to write' Kannada / 'difficult' Only in loanwords. See Kannada phonology. Khanty Most northern dialects / 'knee' Corresponds to a voiceless retroflex affricate in the southern and eastern dialects. Kyrgyz / 'Osh' Allophone of . See Kyrgyz phonology Lower Sorbian 'glass' Malayalam / 'difficult' Only occurs in loanwords. See Malayalam phonology Mapudungun 'fog' Possible allophone of in post-nuclear position. Marathi / 'sage' See Marathi phonology Nepali / 'Shashthi (day)' Allophone of in neighbourhood of retroflex consonants. See Nepali phonology Norwegian 'healthy' Allophone of the sequence in many dialects, including Urban East Norwegian. See Norwegian phonology Oʼodham 'Tucson' Apical. Pashto Southern dialect / 'to show' Polish Standard 'rustle' After voiceless consonants it is also represented by . When written so, it can be instead pronounced as the voiceless raised alveolar non-sonorant trill by few speakers. Transcribed by most Polish scholars. See Polish phonology Southeastern Cuyavian dialects 'they hid' Some speakers. It's a result of hypercorrecting the more popular merger of and into (see szadzenie). Suwałki dialect Romanian Moldavian dialects 'barn' Apical. See Romanian phonology Transylvanian dialects Russian / 'jester' See Russian phonology Scottish Gaelic Lewis 'right' Representation of the phoneme combination . Harris North Uist and Benbecula Skye Serbo-Croatian / 'scarf' Typically transcribed as . See Serbo-Croatian phonology Slovak 'kerchief' Swedish 'rapids' Allophone of the sequence in many dialects, including Central Standard Swedish. See Swedish phonology Tamil / 'difficult' Only occurs in loanwords, often replaced with . See Tamil phonology Telugu / Only occurs in loanwords. See Telugu phonology Toda '(clan name)' Subapical, contrasts . Torwali / 'thin rope' Ubykh 'head' See Ubykh phonology Ukrainian / 'chess' See Ukrainian phonology Upper Sorbian Some dialects — — Used in dialects spoken in villages north of Hoyerswerda; corresponds to in standard language. Vietnamese Southern dialects 'milk' See Vietnamese phonology Yi / 'gold' Yurok 'coyote' Zapotec Tilquiapan — — Allophone of before and .
Voiceless retroflex non-sibilant fricative
Features Features of a voiceless retroflex non-sibilant fricative:
Occurrence Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Ormuri Kaniguram dialect Usually corresponds to in the Logar dialect.
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 IPA Meaning Notes Angami Contrasts with Chokri In free variation with ; contrasts with Faroese 'only' Devoiced approximant allophone of . See Faroese phonology
See also Index of phonetics articles Voiced retroflex fricative
Notes
References
External links