Voiced postalveolar fricative


A voiced postalveolar or palato-alveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to many if not most English-speakers as the "s" sound in "fusion".
The International Phonetic Association uses the phrase voiced postalveolar fricative for the sibilant sound [#Voiced palato-alveolar fricative|], though technically it also describes the voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative, for which there are significant perceptual differences.

Voiced palato-alveolar fricative

A voiced palato-alveolar fricative or voiced domed postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages.

Transcription

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is the lower case form of the letter Ezh . An alternative symbol used in some older and American linguistic literature is, a z with a caron. In some transcriptions of alphabets such as the Cyrillic, the sound is represented by the digraph.
Although present in English, the sound is not represented by a specific letter or digraph, but is formed by yod-coalescence of and in words such as measure. It also appears in some loanwords, mainly from French.
occurs as a borrowed phoneme in a number of languages under the influence of French, Persian or Slavic languages, as in the Germanic languages, the Romance languages, the Turkic languages, Breton and Maltese. The phoneme has the lowest consonant frequency in both English and Persian.
In English and French, may have simultaneous lip rounding, although this is rarely indicated in transcription.

Features

Features of a voiced palato-alveolar fricative:

Occurrence

The sound in Russian denoted by is commonly transcribed as a palato-alveolar fricative but is actually a laminal retroflex fricative.
In English, the phoneme is often found as a hyperforeign substitute for in certain borrowings, Beijing '', raj, Taj Mahal, and sometimes even parmesan'' .

Voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative

A voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative is a consonantal sound. As the International Phonetic Alphabet does not have separate symbols for the post-alveolar consonants, this sound is usually transcribed .

Features

However, it does not have the grooved tongue and directed airflow, or the high frequencies, of a sibilant.