Voiced alveolo-palatal fricative
ʑ
IPA Number	183
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʑ
Unicode (hex)	U+0291
X-SAMPA	z\
Braille
Image

The voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʑ⟩ ("z", plus the curl also found in its voiceless counterpart ⟨ɕ⟩), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is z\. It is the sibilant equivalent of the voiced palatal fricative.

Features

alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives [ɕ, ʑ]

Features of the voiced alveolo-palatal fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is sibilant fricative, which means it is generally produced by channeling air flow along a groove in the back of the tongue up to the place of articulation, at which point it is focused against the sharp edge of the nearly clenched teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is alveolo-palatal. This means that:
  • Its place of articulation is postalveolar, meaning that the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth in the area behind the alveolar ridge (the gum line).
  • Its tongue shape is laminal, meaning that it is the tongue blade that contacts the roof of the mouth.
  • It is heavily palatalized, meaning that the middle of the tongue is bowed and raised towards the hard palate.
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Abkhaz		ажьа	[aˈʑa]	'hare'	See Abkhaz phonology
Adyghe		жьау	[ʑaːw]	'shadow'
Catalan	Eastern[1]	ajut	[ɐˈʑut̪]	'help' (n.)	See Catalan phonology
	All dialects	caixmir	[kä(ɪ̯)ʑˈmiɾ]	'Cashmere'
Chinese	Jiangshan	十	[ʑyœʔ]	'ten'
	Taiwanese Hokkien	今仔日/kin-á-ji̍t	[kɪn˧a˥ʑɪt˥]	'today'
Czech		život	[ʑɪvot]	'life'	See Czech phonology
English	Ghana[2]	vision	[ˈviʑin]	'vision'	Educated speakers may use [ʒ], which this phoneme corresponds to in other dialects.[2]
Japanese		火事/kaji	[kaʑi]	'fire'	Found in free variation with [d͡ʑ] between vowels. See Japanese phonology
Kabardian		жьэ	[ʑa]	'mouth'
Lower Sorbian[3]		źasety	[ʑäs̪ɛt̪ɨ][stress?]	'tenth'
Luxembourgish[4]		héijen	[ˈhɜ̝ɪ̯ʑən]	'high'	Allophone of /ʁ/ after phonologically front vowels; some speakers merge it with [ʒ]. Occurs in only a few words.[4] See Luxembourgish phonology
Pa Na		[ʑu˧˥]		'small'
Polish[5]		źrebię	[ˈʑrɛbjɛ] (help·info)	'foal'	Also denoted by the digraph ⟨zi⟩. See Polish phonology
Portuguese[6][7][8]		magia	[maˈʑi.ɐ]	'magic'	Also described as palato-alveolar [ʒ].[9][10] See Portuguese phonology
Romani	Kalderash[11]	ʒal	[ʑal]	'he/she/it goes'	Realized as [d͡ʒ] in conservative dialects.
Romanian	Transylvanian dialects[12]	geană	[ˈʑanə]	'eyelash'	Realized as [d͡ʒ] in standard Romanian. See Romanian phonology
Russian	Conservative Moscow Standard[13]	позже	[poʑːe]	'later'	Somewhat obsolete in many words, in which most speakers realize it as hard [ʐː].[13] Present only in a few words, usually written ⟨жж⟩ or ⟨зж⟩. See Russian phonology
Sema[14]		aji	[à̠ʑì]	'blood'	Possible allophone of /ʒ/ before /i, e/; can be realized as [d͡ʑ ~ ʒ ~ d͡ʒ] instead.[14]
Serbo-Croatian	Croatian[15]	puž će	[pûːʑ t͡ɕe̞]	'the snail will'	Allophone of /ʒ/ before /t͡ɕ, d͡ʑ/.[15] See Serbo-Croatian phonology
	Some speakers of Montenegrin	źenica	[ʑȇ̞nit̻͡s̪a̠]	'pupil'	Phonemically /zj/ or, in some cases, /z/.
Spanish	Paraguayan[16]	carro	[ˈkaʑo]	'car'	Dialectal realization of /r/ and allophone of /ɾ/ after /t/.
Uzbek[17]		[example needed]
Xumi	Upper[18]	[ʑɐ̝˦]		'beer, wine'
Yi		ꑳ/yi	[ʑi˧]	'tobacco'