Voiceless postalveolar affricate

Uncommon card · No. 128515

A voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant affricate or voiceless domed postalveolar sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the "ch" sound in "chip". This sound is transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with ⟨tʃ⟩, ⟨t͡ʃ⟩, ⟨t͜ʃ⟩, or in some broad transcriptions ⟨c⟩ (though this is the symbol for a voiceless palatal plosive). There is also a ligature ⟨ʧ⟩, which was retired by the International Phonetic Association but is still used. An alternative commonly used in Americanist tradition is ⟨č⟩. Historically, [tʃ] often derives from a former voiceless velar stop /k/ (as in English church; also in Gulf Arabic, Slavic languages, Indo-Iranian languages and Romance languages), or a voiceless alveolar stop /t/ by way of palatalization, especially next to a front vowel (as in English nature; also in Amharic, Portuguese, some accents of Egyptian, etc.).

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