The voiceless palatal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in some vocal languages. The symbol in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...

that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is c. If distinction is necessary, the voiceless alveolo-palatal plosive may be transcribed as ( advanced ) or ( retracted and palatalized ), but these are essentially equivalent, because the contact includes both the blade and body (but not the tip) of the tongue. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are c_+ and t_-' or t_-_j, respectively. There is also a non-IPA letter ("t", plus the curl found in the symbols for alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives ), used especially in

sinological Sinology, or Chinese studies, is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of China primarily through Chinese philosophy, language, literature, culture and history and often refers to Western scholarship. Its origin "may be traced to the e ...

circles. It is common for the phonetic symbol to be used to represent voiceless postalveolar affricate or other similar

affricates An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...

, for example in the

Indic languages Indic languages may refer to: * Indo-Aryan languages, a subgroup of the Indo-European languages spoken mainly in the north of the Indian subcontinent * Languages of the Indian subcontinent, all the indigenous languages of the region regardless of la ...

. This may be considered appropriate when the place of articulation needs to be specified and the distinction between

plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...

and affricate is not contrastive. There is also the voiceless post-palatal plosiveInstead of "post-palatal", it can be called "retracted palatal", "backed palatal", "palato-velar", "pre-velar", "advanced velar", "fronted velar" or "front-velar". For simplicity, this article uses only the term "post-palatal". in some languages, which is articulated slightly more back compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical palatal consonant, though not as back as the prototypical velar consonant. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as (retracted ) or (advanced ). The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are c_- and k_+, respectively. Especially in

broad transcription Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the I ...

, the voiceless post-palatal plosive may be transcribed as a palatalized voiceless velar plosive ( in the IPA, k' or k_j in X-SAMPA).

Features

Features of the voiceless palatal stop: ** The otherwise identical post-palatal variant is articulated slightly behind the hard palate, making it sound closer to the velar . ** Alveolo-palatal variant is articulated also with the blade of the tongue at or behind the alveolar ridge.

Occurrence

Palatal or alveolo-palatal

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Post-palatal

Notes

References

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External links

* {{IPA navigation Palatal consonants Voiceless stops Central consonants Pulmonic consonants