Voiceless palatal fricative
A voiceless 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. It is the non-sibilant equivalent of the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative. Palatal fricatives are relatively rare phonemes, and only 5% of the world's languages have as a phoneme. The sound further occurs as an allophone of , or, in other languages, of in the vicinity of front vowels.
Features
Features of a voiceless palatal fricative:Post-palatal
There is also a voiceless post-palatal or pre-velar fricative in some languages, which is articulated slightly farther back compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical voiceless palatal fricative, though not as back as the prototypical voiceless velar fricative. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as, or .Voiceless palatal approximant
A voiceless palatal approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is, a j with a ring, indicating the voiceless homologue of the voiced palatal approximant. The IPA also had a dedicated symbol, an h with palatal hook, for the similar palatalized hʲ sound, but that is now obsolete. In the Finno-Ugric transcription, it is transcribed, a small capital j.The palatal approximant can in many cases be considered the semivocalic equivalent of the voiceless variant of the close front unrounded vowel. The sound is essentially an Australian English pronounced strictly without vibration of the vocal cords.