Voiceless retroflex affricate

A voiceless retroflex sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is or, often simplified to. There is also a ligature, which has been retired by the International Phonetic Association but is still used.
A laminal variant occurs in Polish cz, and an apical variant in the Indo-Aryan languages.

Features

Features of a voiceless retroflex affricate:

Occurrence

The affricate occurs in a number of languages:

Asturian: Speakers of the western dialects of this language use it instead of the voiced palatal fricative, writing ḷḷ instead of ll.
Slavic languages: Polish, Belarusian, Old Czech, Serbo-Croatian; some speakers of Russian may use it instead of the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate.
a number of Northwest Caucasian languages have retroflex affricates that contrast in secondary articulations like labialization.
Mandarin and other Sinitic languages.