Affricate
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation. It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. English has two affricate phonemes, and, generally spelled ch and j, respectively.
Examples
The English sounds spelled "ch" and "j", German and Italian z and Italian z are typical affricates, and sounds like these are fairly common in the world's languages, as are other affricates with similar sounds, such as those in Polish and Chinese. However, voiced affricates other than are relatively uncommon. For several places of articulation they are not attested at all.Much less common are labiodental affricates, such as in German, Kinyarwanda and Izi, or velar affricates, such as in Tswana or in High Alemannic Swiss German dialects. Worldwide, relatively few languages have affricates in these positions even though the corresponding stop consonants, and, are common or virtually universal. Also less common are alveolar affricates where the fricative release is lateral, such as the sound found in Nahuatl and Navajo. Some other Athabaskan languages, such as Dene Suline, have unaspirated, aspirated, and ejective series of affricates whose release may be dental, alveolar, postalveolar, or lateral:,,,,,,,,,,, and.
Notation
Affricates are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by a combination of two letters, one for the stop element and the other for the fricative element. In order to clarify that these are parts of a single consonant, a tie bar may be used. The tie bar appears most commonly above the two letters, but may be placed under them if it fits better there, or simply because it is more legible. Thus:or
A less common notation indicates the release of the affricate with a superscript:
This is derived from the IPA convention of indicating other releases with a superscript. However, this convention is more typically used for a fricated release that is too brief to be considered a true affricate.
Though they are no longer standard IPA, ligatures are available in Unicode for the sibilant affricates, which remain in common use:
Approved for Unicode 18 in 2026, per request from the IPA, are the remaining coronal affricates:
Ligatures for the non-coronal affricates have also been used.
Any of these notations can be used to distinguish an affricate from a sequence of plosive plus fricative, which is contrastive in languages such as Polish. However, in languages where there is no such distinction within a syllable, such as English or Turkish, a simple sequence of letters such as is commonly used, with no overt indication that they form an affricate. In such cases the syllable boundary may be written to distinguish the plosive-fricative sequence in petshop from the similar affricate in ketchup.
In other phonetic transcription systems, such as the Americanist system, affricates may be transcribed with single letters. The affricate may be transcribed as or ; as, or ; as or ; as, or ; as ; and as.
Single letters may also be used with phonemic transcription in IPA: and are sometimes transcribed with the symbols for the palatal stops, and, for example in the IPA Handbook.
Affricates vs. stop–fricative sequences
In some languages, affricates contrast phonemically with stop–fricative sequences:- Polish affricate in czysta 'clean ' versus stop–fricative in trzysta 'three hundred'; or affricate in dżem 'jam' versus stop–fricative in drzem 'snooze ';
- Klallam affricate in k'ʷə́nc 'look at me' versus stop–fricative in k'ʷə́nts 'he looks at it'.
In English, and are considered phonemically stop–fricative sequences. They often contain a morpheme boundary. The English affricate phonemes and do not contain morpheme boundaries.
The phonemic distinction in English between the affricate and the stop–fricative sequence can be observed by minimal pairs such as the following:
- worst shin →
- worse chin →
Stop–fricatives can be distinguished acoustically from affricates by the rise time of the frication noise, which is shorter for affricates.
Geminate affricates
When affricates are geminated, it is the duration of the plosive closure that is lengthened, not that of the frication. For example, is pronounced, not *.List of affricates
In the case of coronals, the symbols are normally used for the stop portion of the affricate regardless of place. For example, is commonly seen for, for and for.The exemplar languages are ones that have been reported to have these sounds, but in several cases, they may need confirmation.
Sibilant affricates
| Voiceless | Languages | Voiced | Languages |
| Voiceless alveolar affricate | Albanian c Georgian ც German z, tz Japanese つ/ツ Kʼicheʼ Mandarin z Italian z Pashto څ | Voiced alveolar affricate | Albanian x Georgian ძ Japanese Italian z Pashto ځ |
| Voiceless dental sibilant affricate | Hungarian c Macedonian ц Serbo-Croatian c/ц Polish c | Voiced dental sibilant affricate | Hungarian dz Macedonian ѕ Bulgarian дз Polish dz |
| Voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate | Japanese ち/チ Mandarin j Polish ć, ci Serbo-Croatian ć/ћ Thai จ Vietnamese ch | Voiced alveolo-palatal affricate | Japanese じ/ジ, ぢ/ヂ Polish dź, dzi Serbo-Croatian đ/ђ Korean ㅈ |
| Voiceless palato-alveolar affricate | Albanian ç English ch, tch Georgian ჩ German tsch Hungarian cs Indonesian c Italian ci, ce Latvian č Lithuanian č Maltese ċ Persian چ Romanian ci, ce Spanish ch Turkish ç Walloon tch | Voiced palato-alveolar affricate | Albanian xh Arabic ج English j, g Georgian ჯ Hungarian dzs Indonesian j Italian gi, ge Latvian dž Lithuanian dž Maltese ġ Romanian gi, ge Turkish c Walloon dj |
| Voiceless retroflex affricate | Mandarin zh Polish cz Serbo-Croatian č/ч Slovak č Vietnamese tr | Voiced retroflex affricate | Polish dż Serbo-Croatian dž/џ Slovak dž |
The Northwest Caucasian languages Abkhaz and Ubykh both contrast sibilant affricates at four places of articulation: alveolar, postalveolar, alveolo-palatal and retroflex. They also distinguish voiceless, voiced, and ejective affricates at each of these.
When a language has only one type of affricate, it is usually a sibilant; this is the case in e.g. Arabic, most dialects of Spanish, and Thai.
Non-sibilant affricates
| Sound | IPA | Languages | Sound | IPA | Languages |
| Voiceless bilabial affricate | Present allophonically in Kaingang and Taos. Not reported as a phoneme in any natural language. | Voiced bilabial affricate | Allophonic in Banjun and Shipibo | ||
| Voiceless bilabial-labiodental affricate | German, Teke | Voiced bilabial-labiodental affricate | Teke | ||
| Voiceless labiodental affricate | XiNkuna Tsonga | Voiced labiodental affricate | XiNkuna Tsonga | ||
| Voiceless dental non-sibilant affricate | New York English, Luo, Dene Suline, Cun, some varieties of Venetian and other North Italian dialects | Voiced dental non-sibilant affricate | New York, Dublin, and Maori English, Dene Suline | ||
| Voiceless retroflex non-sibilant affricate | Mapudungun, Malagasy | Voiced retroflex non-sibilant affricate | Malagasy | ||
| Voiceless palatal affricate | Skolt Sami, Hungarian, Albanian, allophonically in Kaingang | Voiced palatal affricate | Skolt Sami, Hungarian, Albanian, some Spanish dialects. Not reported to contrast with a voiced palatal plosive | ||
| Voiceless velar affricate | Tswana, High Alemannic German | Voiced velar affricate | Allophonic in some English English | ||
| Voiceless uvular affricate | Nez Percé, Wolof, Bats, Kabardian, Avar, Tsez. Not reported to contrast with a voiceless uvular plosive in natural languages. | Voiced uvular affricate | Reported from the Raivavae dialect of Austral and Ekagi with a velar lateral allophone before front vowels. | ||
| Voiceless pharyngeal affricate | Haida. Not reported to contrast with an epiglottal stop | Voiced pharyngeal affricate | Somali. Pronounced or sometimes with weak epiglottal trilling initially, otherwise realized as | ||
| Voiceless glottal affricate | Allophonic in Received Pronunciation | Voiced glottal affricate | Not attested in any natural language |