Voiceless postalveolar affricate
| tʃ | |
|---|---|
| Pulmonic Consonant | |
| IPA: | t͡ʃ or ʧ |
| X-SAMPA: | t_S or tS (see text) |
| Kirshenbaum: | tS |
| Place of Articulation: | Postalveolar |
| Manner of Articulation: | Affricate |
| Phonological features: | [+consonantal] [+delayed release] [+CORONAL] [+distributed] [+strident] |
The voiceless postalveolar affricate is a quite common sound cross-linguistically. It often arises from t before a high vowel or j. Its voiced equivalent is dʒ. It can also be ejective, tʃʼ.
In X-SAMPA it can be represented explicitly as [t_S], though for convenience it can also be represented as [tS]. The disjunctor hyphen (thus [t-S]) can be used when it is important to emphasize the separateness of the [t] and the [S].
Americanistic, Uralistic etc. linguistic traditions use the symbol č for this sound.
Note that in shallow transcription it is common to use /tʃ/ as a catch-all symbol for a number of different affricates, such as the voiceless retroflex affricate [tʂ], voiceless palato-alveolar affricate [tɕ], or even the voiceless palatal affricate [cç], if they do not contrast in the language in question with an actual postalveolar.
Postalveolar affricates in natlangs
| Plain | ch | chin /tʃɪn/ |
| Plain | ち (chi) | 父 /titi/ [t͡ɕit͡ɕi] |
Note that this is one of the cases where the sound is actually not [tʃ].
| Plain | ch | tōchtli /toːtʃtɬi/ |
| Plain | ch | coche /kotʃe/ |
| Plain | ç | çiçek /tʃitʃec/ |
Postalveolar affricates in conlangs
| Plain | č | čuņ /tʃuŋ/ |
| Aspirated | čʰ | čʰed /tʃʰed/ |
| Ejective | č’ | qömč’oi /qœmtʃʼoi/ |
