Voiceless palatal affricate

A voiceless palatal affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent this sound are and. The tie bar may be omitted, yielding. This affricate also has an affricate ligature, approved for inclusion in Unicode 18.
This sound is the non-sibilant equivalent of the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate.
A voiceless palatal affricate occurs in such languages as Hungarian and Skolt Sami, among others. The consonant is quite rare; it is mostly absent from Europe. It usually occurs with its voiced counterpart, the voiced palatal affricate.
There is also a voiceless post-palatal affricate in some languages, which is articulated slightly more back compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical voiceless palatal affricate, though not as back as the prototypical voiceless velar affricate. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as, or - this article uses only the first symbol.
Especially in broad transcription, a voiceless post-palatal affricate may be transcribed as a palatalized voiceless velar affricate ( or.

Features

Features of a voiceless palatal affricate:
It is not a sibilant.
The otherwise identical post-palatal variant is articulated slightly behind the hard palate, making it sound slightly closer to the velar.