Sibilants are
fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...
consonants of higher
amplitude
The amplitude of a periodic variable is a measure of its change in a single period (such as time or spatial period). The amplitude of a non-periodic signal is its magnitude compared with a reference value. There are various definitions of am ...
and
pitch, made by
directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the
teeth
A tooth ( : teeth) is a hard, calcified structure found in the jaws (or mouths) of many vertebrates and used to break down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores and omnivores, also use teeth to help with capturing or wounding prey, ...
. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ''genre''. The symbols in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
used to denote the sibilant sounds in these words are, respectively, . Sibilants have a characteristically intense sound, which accounts for their
paralinguistic use in getting one's attention (e.g. calling someone using "psst!" or quieting someone using "shhhh!").
In the hissing sibilants and , the back of the tongue forms a narrow channel (is ''
grooved'') to focus the stream of air more intensely, resulting in a high pitch. With the hushing sibilants (occasionally termed ''shibilants''), such as English , , , and , the tongue is flatter, and the resulting pitch lower.
A broader category is stridents, which include more fricatives than sibilants such as
uvulars
Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not prov ...
. Because all sibilants are also stridents, the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. However, the terms do not mean the same thing. The English stridents are . Sibilants are a higher pitched subset of the stridents. The English sibilants are . On the other hand, and are stridents, but not sibilants, because they are lower in pitch.
"Stridency" refers to the
perceptual
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...
intensity of the sound of a sibilant consonant, or obstacle fricatives or affricates, which refers to the critical role of the teeth in producing the sound as an obstacle to the airstream. Non-sibilant fricatives and affricates produce their characteristic sound directly with the tongue or lips etc. and the place of contact in the mouth, without secondary involvement of the teeth.
The characteristic intensity of sibilants means that small variations in tongue shape and position are perceivable, with the result that there are many sibilant types that contrast in various languages.
Acoustics
Sibilants are louder than their non-sibilant counterparts, and most of their acoustic energy occurs at higher frequencies than non-sibilant fricatives—usually around 8,000 Hz.
Sibilant types
All sibilants are
coronal consonant
Coronals are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Among places of articulation, only the coronal consonants can be divided into as many articulation types: apical (using the tip of the tongue), laminal (using the ...
s (made with the tip or front part of the tongue). However, there is a great deal of variety among sibilants as to tongue shape, point of contact on the tongue, and point of contact on the upper side of the mouth.
The following variables affect sibilant sound quality, and, along with their possible values, are ordered from sharpest (highest-pitched) to dullest (lowest-pitched):
* Tongue shape: ,
alveolo-palatal
In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (or alveopalatal) consonants, sometimes synonymous with pre-palatal consonants, are intermediate in articulation between the coronal and dorsal consonants, or which have simultaneous alveolar and palatal artic ...
,
palato-alveolar,
retroflex
*
Place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
(point of contact on the upper side of the mouth): or
denti-alveolar
In linguistics, a denti-alveolar consonant or dento-alveolar consonant is a consonant that is articulated with a flat tongue against the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth, such as and in languages such as French, Italian and Spanish. That is, ...
, ,
postalveolar
Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but n ...
,
* Point of contact on the tongue: "closed" (
see below), non-"closed", ,
Generally, the values of the different variables co-occur so as to produce an overall sharper or duller sound. For example, a laminal denti-alveolar grooved sibilant occurs in
Polish, and a subapical palatal retroflex sibilant occurs in
Toda.
Tongue shape
The main distinction is the shape of the tongue. Most sibilants have a
groove
Groove or Grooves may refer to:
Music
* Groove (music)
* Groove (drumming)
* The Groove (band), an Australian rock/pop band of the 1960s
* The Groove (Sirius XM), a US radio station
* Groove 101.7FM, a former Perth, Australia, radio station
...
running down the centerline of the tongue that helps focus the airstream, but it is not known how widespread this is. In addition, the following tongue shapes are described, from sharpest and highest-pitched to dullest and lowest-pitched:
* Hollow (e.g. ): This hollow accepts a large volume of air that is forced through a typically narrow aperture that directs a high-velocity jet of air against the teeth, which results in a high-pitched, piercing "hissing" sound. Because of the prominence of these sounds, they are the most common and most stable of sibilants cross-linguistically. They occur in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
, where they are denoted with a letter ''s'' or ''z'', as in ''soon'' or ''zone''.
*
Alveolo-palatal
In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (or alveopalatal) consonants, sometimes synonymous with pre-palatal consonants, are intermediate in articulation between the coronal and dorsal consonants, or which have simultaneous alveolar and palatal artic ...
(e.g. ): with a convex, V-shaped tongue, and highly
palatalized (middle of the tongue strongly raised or bowed).
*
Palato-alveolar (e.g. ): with a
"domed" tongue (convex and moderately palatalized). These sounds occur in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
, where they are denoted with letter combinations such as ''sh'', ''ch'', ''g'', ''j'' or ''si'', as in ''shin'', ''chin'', ''gin'' and ''vision''.
*
Retroflex (e.g. ): with a flat or concave tongue, and no palatalization. There is a variety of these sounds, some of which also go by other names (e.g. "flat postalveolar" or "
apico-alveolar
An apical consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the tip of the tongue (apex) in conjunction with upper articulators from lips to postalveolar, and possibly prepalatal. It contrasts with laminal conson ...
"). The or "true" retroflex sounds are the very dullest and lowest-pitched of all the sibilants.
The latter three post-alveolar types of sounds are often known as "hushing" sounds because of their quality, as opposed to the "hissing" alveolar sounds. The alveolar sounds in fact occur in several varieties, in addition to the normal sound of English ''s'':
*
Palatalized: Sibilants can occur with or without raising the tongue body to the palate (
palatalization). Palatalized alveolars are transcribed e.g. and occur in
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
; they sound similar to the cluster occurring in the middle of the English phrase ''miss you''.
* Lisping: Alveolar sibilants made with the tip of the tongue () near the upper teeth have a softer sound reminiscent of (but still sharper-sounding than) the "lisping" sound of English ''think''. These sounds are relatively uncommon, but occur in some of the indigenous languages of
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
as well as in the
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
dialects of western and southern
Andalucía
Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a "historical nationality". The ...
(southwest
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, ...
), mostly in the provinces of
Cádiz
Cádiz (, , ) is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the Province of Cádiz, one of eight that make up the autonomous community of Andalusia.
Cádiz, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe, ...
,
Málaga
Málaga (, ) is a municipality of Spain, capital of the Province of Málaga, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. With a population of 578,460 in 2020, it is the second-most populous city in Andalusia after Seville and the sixth most po ...
,
Sevilla
Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...
and
Huelva
Huelva (, ) is a city in southwestern Spain, the capital of the province of Huelva in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is between two short rias though has an outlying spur including nature reserve on the Gulf of Cádiz coast. The ria ...
. In these dialects, the lisping sibilant (sometimes indicated in Spanish
dialectology Dialectology (from Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , '' -logia'') is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their ass ...
as ) is the
most common pronunciation of the letters ''s'' and ''z'', as well as ''c'' before ''i'' or ''e'', replacing the or that occur elsewhere in the country.
Speaking non-technically, the retroflex consonant sounds somewhat like a mixture between the regular English of "ship" and a strong American "r"; while the alveolo-palatal consonant sounds somewhat like a mixture of English of "ship" and the in the middle of "miss you".
Place of articulation
Sibilants can be made at any articulation, i.e. the tongue can contact the upper side of the mouth anywhere from the upper teeth () to the
hard palate
The hard palate is a thin horizontal bony plate made up of two bones of the facial skeleton, located in the roof of the mouth. The bones are the palatine process of the maxilla and the horizontal plate of palatine bone. The hard palate spans t ...
(), with the in-between articulations being
denti-alveolar
In linguistics, a denti-alveolar consonant or dento-alveolar consonant is a consonant that is articulated with a flat tongue against the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth, such as and in languages such as French, Italian and Spanish. That is, ...
, and
postalveolar
Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but n ...
.
Point of contact on the tongue
The tongue can contact the upper side of the mouth with the very tip of the tongue (an ' articulation, e.g. ); with the surface just behind the tip, called the ''
blade
A blade is the portion of a tool, weapon, or machine with an edge that is designed to puncture, chop, slice or scrape surfaces or materials. Blades are typically made from materials that are harder than those they are to be used on. Histor ...
'' of the tongue (a ' articulation, e.g. ); or with the underside of the tip (a ' articulation). Apical and subapical articulations are always ''tongue-up'', with the tip of the tongue above the teeth, while laminal articulations can be either tongue-up or ''tongue-down'', with the tip of the tongue behind the lower teeth. This distinction is particularly important for
retroflex sibilants, because all three varieties can occur, with noticeably different sound qualities. For more information on these variants and their relation to sibilants, see the article on
postalveolar consonant
Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but n ...
s.
For tongue-down laminal articulations, an additional distinction can be made depending on where exactly behind the lower teeth the tongue tip is placed. A little ways back from the lower teeth is a hollow area (or pit) in the lower surface of the mouth. When the tongue tip rests in this hollow area, there is an empty space below the tongue (a ''sublingual cavity''), which results in a relatively duller sound. When the tip of the tongue rests against the lower teeth, there is no sublingual cavity, resulting in a sharper sound. Usually, the position of the tip of the tongue correlates with the grooved vs. hushing tongue shape so as to maximize the differences. However, the palato-alveolar sibilants in the
Northwest Caucasian languages
The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes ''Pontic languages'' (from the historical region of Pontus, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the Northeast Ca ...
such as
Ubykh are an exception. These sounds have the tongue tip resting directly against the lower teeth, which gives the sounds a quality that Catford describes as "hissing-hushing". Ladefoged and Maddieson term this a "''closed'' laminal postalveolar" articulation, and transcribe them (following Catford) as , although this is not an IPA notation. See the article on
postalveolar consonant
Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but n ...
s for more information.
Symbols in the IPA
The following table shows the types of sibilant fricatives defined in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
:
Diacritics can be used for finer detail. For example, apical and laminal alveolars can be specified as ''vs'' ; a
dental (or more likely ''denti-alveolar'') sibilant as ; a palatalized alveolar as ; and a generic "retracted sibilant" as , a transcription frequently used for the sharper-quality types of retroflex consonants (e.g. the laminal "flat" type and the "
apico-alveolar
An apical consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the tip of the tongue (apex) in conjunction with upper articulators from lips to postalveolar, and possibly prepalatal. It contrasts with laminal conson ...
" type). There is no diacritic to denote the laminal "closed" articulation of palato-alveolars in the
Northwest Caucasian languages
The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes ''Pontic languages'' (from the historical region of Pontus, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the Northeast Ca ...
, but they are sometimes provisionally transcribed as .
Possible combinations
The attested possibilities, with exemplar languages, are as follows. Note that the IPA diacritics are simplified; some articulations would require two diacritics to be fully specified, but only one is used in order to keep the results legible without the need for
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
IPA fonts. Also,
Ladefoged has resurrected an obsolete IPA symbol, the under dot, to indicate ''apical postalveolar'' (normally included in the category of
retroflex consonant
A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the h ...
s), and that notation is used here. (Note that the notation is sometimes reversed; either may also be called 'retroflex' and written .)
is an ad-hoc transcription. The old IPA letters
are also available.
These sounds are usually just transcribed
. Apical postalveolar and subapical palatal sibilants do not contrast in any language, but if necessary, apical postalveolars can be transcribed with an apical diacritic, as
or
. Ladefoged resurrects the old retroflex sub-dot for apical retroflexes,
Also seen in the literature on e.g. Hindi and Norwegian is
– the domed articulation of precludes a subapical realization.
Whistled sibilants
Whistled sibilants occur in speech pathology and may be caused by dental prostheses or orthodontics. However, they also occur phonemically in several southern Bantu languages, the best known being
Shona
Shona often refers to:
* Shona people, a Southern African people
* Shona language, a Bantu language spoken by Shona people today
Shona may also refer to:
* ''Shona'' (album), 1994 album by New Zealand singer Shona Laing
* Shona (given name)
* S ...
.
The whistled sibilants of Shona have been variously described—as
labialized
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...
but not velarized, as retroflex, etc., but none of these features are required for the sounds. Using the
Extended IPA, Shona ''sv'' and ''zv'' may be transcribed
and
. Other transcriptions seen include purely labialized
and
(Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996) and labially co-articulated
and
(or
and
). In the otherwise IPA transcription of Shona in Doke (1967), the whistled sibilants are transcribed with the non-IPA letters
and
.
Besides Shona, whistled sibilants have been reported as phonemes in
Kalanga,
Tsonga,
Changana,
Tshwa—all of which are Southern African languages—and
Tabasaran. The articulation of whistled sibilants may differ between languages. In Shona, the lips are
compressed throughout, and the sibilant may be followed by normal labialization upon release. (That is, there is a contrast among ''s, sw, ȿ, ȿw''.) In Tsonga, the whistling effect is weak; the lips are narrowed but also the tongue is
retroflex. Tswa may be similar. In Changana, the lips are rounded (protruded), but so in /s/ in the sequence /usu/, so there is evidently some distinct phonetic phenomenon occurring here that has yet to be formally identified and described.
Linguistic contrasts among sibilants
Not including differences in
manner of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators ( speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and palate) when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is ''stricture,'' that is ...
or
secondary articulation
In phonetics, secondary articulation occurs when the articulation of a consonant is equivalent to the combined articulations of two or three simpler consonants, at least one of which is an approximant. The secondary articulation of such co-articu ...
, some languages have as many as four different types of sibilants. For example,
Northern Qiang
Northern Qiang is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Qiangic branch, more specifically falling under the Tibeto-Burman family. It is spoken by approximately 60,000 people in East Tibet, and in north-central Sichuan Province, China.
Unlike its cl ...
and
Southern Qiang have a four-way distinction among sibilant affricates , with one for each of the four tongue shapes.
Toda also has a four-way sibilant distinction, with one alveolar, one palato-alveolar, and two retroflex (apical postalveolar and subapical palatal).
The now-extinct
Ubykh language
Ubykh or Päkhy was a Northwest Caucasian language once spoken by the Ubykh tribe of Circassians who originally lived along the eastern coast of the Black Sea before being deported ''en masse'' to Turkey in the Circassian genocide.
The Ubykh ...
was particularly complex, with a total of 27 sibilant consonants. Not only all four tongue shapes were represented (with the palato-alveolar appearing in the laminal "closed" variation) but also both the palato-alveolars and alveolo-palatals could additionally appear
labialized
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...
. Besides, there was a five-way manner distinction among voiceless and voiced fricatives, voiceless and voiced affricates, and affricates. (The three labialized palato-alveolar affricates were missing, which is why the total was 27, not 30.) The Bzyp dialect of the related
Abkhaz language
Abkhaz ( ; ), sometimes spelled Abxaz and also known as Abkhazian, is a Northwest Caucasian language most closely related to Abaza. It is spoken mostly by the Abkhaz people. It is one of the official languages of Abkhazia, where around 100,00 ...
also has a similar inventory.
Some languages have four types when
palatalization is considered.
Polish is one example, with both palatalized and non-palatalized laminal denti-alveolars, laminal postalveolar (or "flat retroflex"), and alveolo-palatal ().
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
has the same surface contrasts, but the alveolo-palatals are arguably not phonemic. They occur only geminate, and the retroflex consonants never occur geminate, which suggests that both are allophones of the same phoneme.
Somewhat more common are languages with three sibilant types, including one hissing and two hushing. As with Polish and Russian, the two hushing types are usually postalveolar and alveolo-palatal since these are the two most distinct from each other.
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...
is an example of such a language. However, other possibilities exist.
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia an ...
has alveolar, flat postalveolar and alveolo-palatal affricates whereas
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
has palato-alveolar and laminal and apical alveolar (
apico-alveolar
An apical consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the tip of the tongue (apex) in conjunction with upper articulators from lips to postalveolar, and possibly prepalatal. It contrasts with laminal conson ...
) fricatives and affricates (late Medieval peninsular
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
and
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
had the same distinctions among fricatives).
Many languages, such as
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
, have two sibilant types, one hissing and one hushing. A wide variety of languages across the world have this pattern. Perhaps most common is the pattern, as in English, with alveolar and palato-alveolar sibilants. Modern northern peninsular
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
has a single
apico-alveolar
An apical consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the tip of the tongue (apex) in conjunction with upper articulators from lips to postalveolar, and possibly prepalatal. It contrasts with laminal conson ...
sibilant fricative , as well as a single palato-alveolar sibilant affricate . However, there are also languages with alveolar and apical retroflex sibilants (such as Standard
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
) and with alveolar and alveolo-palatal postalveolars (e.g. alveolar and laminal palatalized i.e. in
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
and
Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese (' ), also Portuguese of Brazil (', ) or South American Portuguese (') is the set of varieties of the Portuguese language native to Brazil and the most influential form of Portuguese worldwide. It is spoken by almost all of ...
, the latter probably through Amerindian influence, and alveolar and dorsal i.e. proper in
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
).
Only a few languages with sibilants lack the hissing type.
Middle Vietnamese
Vietnamese ( vi, tiếng Việt, links=no) is an Austroasiatic language originating from Vietnam where it is the national and official language. Vietnamese is spoken natively by over 70 million people, several times as many as the rest of the ...
is normally reconstructed with two sibilant fricatives, both hushing (one retroflex, one alveolo-palatal). Some languages have only a single hushing sibilant and no hissing sibilant. That occurs in southern Peninsular Spanish dialects of the "
ceceo
In Spanish dialectology, the realization of coronal fricatives is one of the most prominent features distinguishing various dialect regions. The main three realizations are the phonemic distinction between and ('), the presence of only alveo ...
" type, which have replaced the former hissing fricative with , leaving only .
Languages with no sibilants are fairly rare. Most have no fricatives at all or only the fricative . Examples include most
Australian languages
The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...
, and
Rotokas, and what is generally reconstructed for
Proto-Bantu
Proto-Bantu is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Bantu languages, a subgroup of the Southern Bantoid languages. It is thought to have originally been spoken in West/Central Africa in the area of what is now Cameroon.Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. ( ...
. Languages with fricatives but no sibilants, however, do occur, such as
Ukue in
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
, which has only the fricatives . Also, almost all Eastern
Polynesian languages
The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family.
There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austro ...
have no sibilants but do have the fricatives and/or :
Māori
Māori or Maori can refer to:
Relating to the Māori people
* Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group
* Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand
* Māori culture
* Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...
,
Hawaiian,
Tahitian,
Rapa Nui
Easter Island ( rap, Rapa Nui; es, Isla de Pascua) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its nearly ...
, most
Cook Islands Māori
Cook Islands Māori is an Eastern Polynesian language that is the official language of the Cook Islands. Cook Islands Māori is closely related to New Zealand Māori, but is a distinct language in its own right. Cook Islands Māori is simply c ...
dialects,
Marquesan
The Marquesas Islands (; french: Îles Marquises or ' or '; Marquesan: ' ( North Marquesan) and ' ( South Marquesan), both meaning "the land of men") are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in ...
, and
Tuamotuan.
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nativ ...
only has the sibilant and fricative in loanwords, and they are frequently replaced by native sounds. The sibilants exist as allophones of and the fricative as an allophone of .
Contested definitions
Authors including
Chomsky and
Halle group and as sibilants. However, they do not have the grooved articulation and high frequencies of other sibilants, and most phoneticians continue to group them together with
bilabial
In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a labial consonant articulated with both lips.
Frequency
Bilabial consonants are very common across languages. Only around 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tli ...
, and (inter)dental , as non-sibilant
anterior fricatives. For a grouping of sibilants and , the term ''strident'' is more common. Some researchers judge to be non-strident in English, based on measurements of its comparative amplitude, but to be strident in other languages (for example, in the African language
Ewe, where it contrasts with non-strident ).
The nature of ''sibilants'' as so-called 'obstacle fricatives' is complicated – there is a continuum of possibilities relating to the angle at which the jet of air may strike an obstacle. The grooving often considered necessary for classification as a ''sibilant'' has been observed in ultrasound studies of the tongue for the supposedly ''non-sibilant'' voiceless alveolar fricative of English.
[Stone, M. & Lundberg, A. (1996)]
Three-dimensional tongue surface shapes of English consonants and vowels
''Journal of the Acoustical Society of America'', vol. 99 (6), pp. 3728–3737
See also
*
De-essing
De-essing (also desibilizing) is any technique intended to reduce or eliminate the excessive prominence of sibilant consonants, such as the sounds normally represented in English by " s", "z", "ch", "j" and "sh", in recordings of the human voice. ...
*
Plosive consonant
*
Shibboleth
A shibboleth (; hbo, , šībbōleṯ) is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another. Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passwo ...
*
Sj-sound
The ''sj''-sound ( sv, sj-ljudet ) is a voiceless fricative phoneme found in most dialects of the sound system of Swedish. It has a variety of realisations, whose precise phonetic characterisation is a matter of debate, but which usually featur ...
*
Strident vowel
Strident vowels (also called sphincteric vowels) are strongly pharyngealized vowels accompanied by an (ary)epiglottal trill, with the larynx being raised and the pharynx constricted. Either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages thus vibrate ...
*
Voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant
The voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at leas ...
*
Voiced apicoalveolar fricative
The voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described.
* The symbol for the alveolar sibilant ...
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
*
* Shosted, Ryan K. (2006)
Just put your lips together and blow? The whistled fricatives of Southern Bantu''
External links
Example of whistled sibilants in Shona
{{Articulation navbox
Manner of articulation