Voiceless alveolar fricative

The voiceless alveolar fricative is a type of consonant. The letter for this sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet is ⟨s⟩. The X-SAMPA symbol for this sound is ⟨s⟩. The English language has this sound, and it is the sound represented by 's' in sun and sorry.

Voiceless alveolar sibilant
s
IPA number132
Encoding
Entity (decimal)s
Unicode (hex)U+0073
X-SAMPAs
Kirshenbaums
Sound

 

Features

  • Its phonation is voiceless. It means that we produce this sound without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
  • We produce it at alveolar. It means that we produce this sound with the tip of the tongue(apical) or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge (laminal).
  • Its behavior is fricative. It means that we produce this sound by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, to make turbulence.

Examples

Language Word IPA Meaning
Adyghe сэ/sė [sa] 'I'
Arabic Modern Standard[1] جَلَسَ/ǧalasa [ˈdʒælæsɐ] 'to sit'
Assyrian ܣܝܦܐ sèpa [seːpaː] 'sword'
Bengali রাস্তা [raːst̪a] 'street'
Burmese စစားဗျီ/ca carr bhye [sə sá bjì] 'I am eating now'
Chinese Cantonese / sim2 [siːm˧˥] 'twinkle'
Dutch Belgian Standard[2] staan [staːn] 'to stand'
Emilian and Romagnol sèl [ˈs̺ʲɛːl] 'salt'
Estonian sõna [ˈsɤnɑ] 'word'
English sit [sɪt] 'sit'
Esperanto Esperanto [espeˈranto] 'Who hopes'
Faroese sandur [sandʊɹ] 'sand'
Georgian[3] ამი/sami [ˈsɑmi] 'three'
Hebrew ספר/sefer [ˈsefeʁ] 'book'
Hindustani साल / سال [saːl] 'year'
Japanese[4] 複数形 / fukusūkē [ɸɯkɯsɯːkeː] 'plural'
Kabardian сэ/sė [sa] 'I'
Khmer អេស្ប៉ាញ / <span title="Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Language/data/ISO 639 override' not found. transliteration" class="Unicode" style="white-space:normal; text-decoration: none">éspanh [ʔeːpaːɲ] noun: 'Spain'
adjective: 'Spanish'
Korean / seom [sʌːm] 'island'
Malay satu [satu] 'one'
Maltese iebes [eaˈbes] 'hard'
Marathi साप [saːp] 'snake'
Nepali गरमाथा [sʌɡʌrmät̪ʰä] 'Mount Everest'
Odia ମାନ [sɔmänɔ] 'equal'
Occitan Limousin maichent [mejˈsẽ] 'bad'
Persian سیب / sib [sib] 'apple'
Portuguese[5] caço [ˈkasu] 'I hunt'
Punjabi ਸੱਪ/sapp [səpː] 'snake'
Spanish[6] Latin American saltador [s̻al̪t̪aˈð̞o̞r] 'jumper'
Canarian
Andalusian
Filipino
Swahili Kiswahili [kiswaˈhili] 'Swahili'
Sylheti ꠢꠂꠍꠦ/oise [ɔise] 'done'
Vietnamese[7] xa [saː˧] 'far'
Yi sy [sɻ̩˧] 'die'

Notes

References

  • Thelwall, Robin (1990), "Illustrations of the IPA: Arabic", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 20 (2): 37–41, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004266, S2CID 243640727
  • Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2003) [First published 1981], The Phonetics of English and Dutch (5th ed.), Leiden: Brill Publishers, ISBN 978-9004103405
  • Shosted, Ryan K.; Chikovani, Vakhtang (2006), "Standard Georgian" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 36 (2): 255–264, doi:10.1017/S0025100306002659
  • Okada, Hideo (1999), "Japanese", in International Phonetic Association (ed.), Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge University Press, pp. 117–119, ISBN 978-0-52163751-0
  • Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 25 (2): 90–94, doi:10.1017/S0025100300005223, S2CID 249414876
  • Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33 (2): 255–259, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001373
  • Thompson, Laurence C. (1959), "Saigon phonemics", Language, 35 (3): 454–476, doi:10.2307/411232, JSTOR 411232