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Voiceless Retroflex Affricate
The 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 , sometimes simplified to or , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ts`. Its apical variant is and laminal variant . 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. Features Features of the voiceless retroflex affricate: * Its place of articulation is retroflex A retroflex () or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant wher ...
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Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and [b], pronounced with the lips; and [d], pronounced with the front of the tongue; and [g], pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced throughout the vocal tract; , [v], , and [z] pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and and , which have air flowing through the nose (nasal consonant, nasals). Most consonants are Pulmonic consonant, pulmonic, using air pressure from the lungs to generate a sound. Very few natural languages are non-pulmonic, making use of Ejective consonant, ejectives, Implosive consonant, implosives, and Click consonant, clicks. Contrasting with consonants are vowels. Since the number of speech sounds in the world's languages is much greater than the number of letters in any one alphabet, Linguis ...
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Palatalization (phonetics)
In phonetics, palatalization (, ) or palatization is a way of pronouncing a consonant in which part of the tongue is moved close to the hard palate. Consonants pronounced this way are said to be palatalized and are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by affixing a superscript ''j'' ⟨ʲ⟩ to the base consonant. Palatalization is not Phonemic contrast, phonemic in English, but it is in Slavic languages such as Russian language, Russian and Ukrainian language, Ukrainian, Finnic languages such as Estonian language, Estonian, Karelian language, Karelian, and Võro language, Võro, and other languages such as Irish language, Irish, Marshallese language, Marshallese, Kashmiri language, Kashmiri, and Japanese language, Japanese. Types In technical terms, palatalization refers to the secondary articulation of consonants by which the body of the tongue is raised toward the hard palate and the alveolar ridge during the articulation of the consonant. Such consonants are phon ...
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Chinese Characters
Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only one that has remained in continuous use. Over a documented history spanning more than three millennia, the function, style, and means of writing characters have changed greatly. Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes, the units of meaning in a language. Writing all of the frequently used vocabulary in a language requires roughly 2000–3000 characters; , nearly have been identified and included in ''The Unicode Standard''. Characters are created according to several principles, where aspects of shape and pronunciation may be used to indicate the character's meaning. The first attested characters are oracle bone inscriptions made during the 13th century&n ...
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Chinese Language
Chinese ( or ) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and List of ethnic groups in China, many minority ethnic groups in China, as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora. Approximately 1.39 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language. Chinese languages form the Sinitic languages, Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a Language family, family. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin with 66%, or around 800&nb ...
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Belarusian Phonology
The phonological system of the modern Belarusian language consists of at least 44 phonemes: 5 vowels and 39 consonants. Consonants may also be geminated. There is no absolute agreement on the number of phonemes; rarer or contextually variant sounds are included by some scholars. Many consonants may form pairs that differ only in palatalization (called ''hard'' and ''soft'' consonants, the latter being represented in the IPA with the symbol ). In some of such pairs, the place of articulation is additionally changed (see distinctive features below). Some consonants do not have palatalized counterparts. Distinctive features As an East Slavic language, Belarusian phonology is very similar to both Russian and Ukrainian phonology. The primary differences are: * Akannye () – the merger of unstressed into . The pronunciation of the merged vowel is a clear open front unrounded vowel , including after soft consonants and . In standard Russian akanye, the merger happens only afte ...
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Belarusian Alphabet
The Belarusian alphabet is based on the Cyrillic script and is derived from the alphabet of Old Church Slavonic. It has existed in its modern form since 1918 and has 32 letters. See also Belarusian Latin alphabet and Belarusian Arabic alphabet. Letters Details Officially, the represents both and , but the latter occurs only in borrowings and mimesis. The is used by some for the latter sound but, with the exception of Taraškievica, has not been standard. A followed by or may denote either two distinct respective sounds (in some prefix-root combinations: пад-земны, ад-жыць) or the Belarusian affricates and (for example, падзея, джала). In some representations of the alphabet, the affricates are included in parentheses after the letter to emphasize their special status: . is not a distinct phoneme but the neutralization of /v/ and /l/ when there is no following vowel, like before a consonant or at the end of a word. Palatalization o ...
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Belarusian Language
Belarusian (, ) is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language. It is one of the two Languages of Belarus, official languages in Belarus, the other being Russian language, Russian. It is also spoken in parts of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, and the United States by the Belarusian diaspora. Before Belarus Dissolution of the Soviet Union, gained independence in 1991, the language was known in English language, English as ''Byelorussian'' or ''Belorussian'', or alternatively as ''White Russian''. Following independence, it became known as ''Belarusian'', or alternatively as ''Belarusan''. As one of the East Slavic languages, Belarusian shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group. To some extent, Russian, Ukrainian language, Ukrainian, and Belarusian retain a degree of mutual intelligibility. Belarusian descends from a language generally referred to as Ruthenian language, Ruthenian (13th to 18th centuries), which had, in turn, descend ...
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Adyghe Phonology
Adyghe is a language of the Northwest Caucasian family which, like the other Northwest Caucasian languages, is very rich in consonants, featuring many labialized and ejective consonants. Adyghe is phonologically more complex than Kabardian, having the retroflex consonants and their labialized forms. Consonants Adyghe exhibits a large number of consonants: between 50 and 60 consonants in the various Adyghe dialects. Below is the IPA phoneme chart of the consonant phonemes of Adyghe. * In the Black Sea coast dialects of Adyghe (e.g. Shapsug and Natukhai) there exist a palatalized voiced velar stop , a palatalized voiceless velar stop and a palatalized velar ejective that were merged with , and in most Adyghe dialects. For example, the Shapsug words "" "shirt", "" "chicken" and "" "rope" are pronounced in other dialects as "" , "" and "" . * The labialized retroflex consonants and in the literary Temirgoy dialect are alveolo-palatal and in the Black Sea ...
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Cyrillic Script
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, Caucasian languages, Caucasian and Iranian languages, Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Asia, and East Asia, and used by many other minority languages. , around 250 million people in Eurasia use Cyrillic as the official script for their national languages, with Russia accounting for about half of them. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the Languages of the European Union#Writing systems, European Union, following the Latin script, Latin and Greek alphabet, Greek alphabets. The Early Cyrillic alphabet was developed during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulga ...
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Adyghe Language
Adyghe ( or ; also known as West Circassian) is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken by the western subgroups of Circassians. It is spoken mainly in Russia, as well as in Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Israel, where Circassians settled after the Circassian genocide (–1870) by the Russian Empire. It is closely related to the Kabardian language, Kabardian (East Circassian) language, though some reject the distinction between the two languages in favor of both being dialects of a unitary Circassian languages, Circassian language. The literary standard of Adyghe is based on its Temirgoy dialect. Adyghe and Russian language, Russian are the two official languages of the Adygea, Republic of Adygea in the Russian Federation. In Russia, there are around 128,000 speakers of Adyghe, almost all of them native speakers. In total, some 300,000 speak it worldwide. The largest Adyghe-speaking community is in Turkey, spoken by the diaspora from the Russo-Circassian War, Russian–Circassi ...
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Abkhaz Phonology
Abkhaz is a language of the Northwest Caucasian family which, like the other Northwest Caucasian languages, is very rich in consonants. Abkhaz has a large consonantal inventory that contrasts 58 consonants in the literary Abzhywa dialect, coupled with just two phonemic vowels (). Abkhaz has three major dialects: Abzhywa, Bzyp and Sadz, which differ mainly in phonology, with the lexical differences being due to contact with neighbouring languages. Consonants Below is the IPA phoneme chart of the consonant phonemes of Abkhaz: Phonemes preceded by an (*) are found in the Bzyp and Sadz dialects of Abkhaz, but not in Abzhywa; phonemes preceded by a (†) are unique to the Bzyp dialect. The total number of consonant phonemes in Abkhaz is, therefore, 58 in the Abzhywa dialect, 60 in the Sadz dialect, and 67 in Bzyp. The obstruents are characterised by a three-fold contrast between voiced, aspirated voiceless and glottalised forms; both the aspirated and glottalised forms are ...
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Abkhazian Che
Abkhazian Che (Ҽ ҽ; italics: ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. Abkhazian Che is used in the alphabet of the Abkhaz language, where it represents the voiceless retroflex affricate . In the alphabet, it is placed between and . Resemblance The letter only coincidentally resembles a lowercase Latin letter e. Historically, it is the cursive form of the corresponding letter ( ) in the Abkhazian Latin alphabet, where it somewhat resembled a Greek Phi, φ. Cche Cche or Double Che (Ꚇ ꚇ; italics: ''Ꚇ ꚇ'') is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It was used in the old Abkhaz language, Abkhaz alphabets, where it represents the voiceless retroflex affricate . The letter was invented by baron Peter von Uslar. In 1862 he published his linguistic study "Абхазский язык". The letter is Ҽ-shaped but in 1887 Uslar's study was reprinted by M. Zavadskiy who changed its shape and the result resembled a Cyrillic Ч doubled. Later the letter returned to its in ...
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