Affricate consonant

Affricates are consonants that begin as a stop and release as a fricative with the same place of articulation (most often alveolar). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. English has two affricates, and, often spelled ch and j.

Examples
The English sounds spelled "ch" and "j" (transcribed and  in IPA), German and Italian z  and Italian z  are typical affricates. These sounds are fairly common in the world's languages, as are other affricates with similar sounds, such as those in Polish and Chinese. However, other than, voiced affricates are relatively uncommon. For several places of articulation they are not attested at all.

Much less common are labiodental affricates, such as in German and Izi, or velar affricates, such as  in Tswana (written kg) or High Alemannic Swiss German dialects. Worldwide, relatively few languages have affricates in these positions, even though the corresponding stop consonants are virtually universal. Also less common are alveolar affricates where the fricative is lateral, such as the sound found in Nahuatl and Navajo. Some other Athabaskan languages, such as Dene Suline, have unaspirated, aspirated, and ejective series of affricates that may be dental, alveolar, postalveolar, or lateral, that is, , , , , , , , , , , and.

Notation
Affricates are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by a combination of two letters, one for the stop element and the other for the fricative element. In order to show that these are parts of a single consonant, a tie bar is generally used. The tie bar appears most commonly above the two letters, but may be placed under them if it fits better there, or simply because this is more legible. Thus: or

A less common notation is to indicate the release of the affricate with a superscript: This is derived from the IPA convention of indicating other releases with a superscript. However, this convention is more typically used for a fricated release that is too brief to be considered a true affricate.

Though they are no longer standard IPA, ligatures are available in Unicode for the six common affricates Any of these notations distinguishes affricates from sequences of stop plus fricative, a difference that distinguishes words in languages such as Polish. However, in languages where there is no such distinction, such as English, the tie bars are commonly dropped.

In other phonetic transcription systems, such as the Americanist system, the affricates, , , , , are transcribed respectively as $⟨⟩$ or $⟨⟩$; $⟨⟩$, $⟨⟩$, or (older) $⟨⟩$; $⟨⟩$ or $⟨⟩$; $⟨⟩$, $⟨⟩$, or (older) $⟨⟩$; $⟨⟩$; and $⟨⟩$ or $⟨⟩$. Within the IPA, and  are sometimes transcribed with the symbols for the palatal stops, $⟨⟩$ and $⟨⟩$.

Affricates vs. stop–fricative sequences
Affricates can contrast phonemically with stop–fricative sequences. Examples: and
 * Polish affricate in czysta 'clean (f.)' versus stop–fricative  in trzysta 'three hundred',
 * Klallam affricate in  'look at me' versus stop–fricative  in  'he looks at it'.

In the stop–fricative sequence, the stop has a release burst before the fricative starts; but in the affricate, the fricative element is the release. Stop–fricative sequences may have a syllable boundary between the two segments, but not necessarily.

In English, and  (nuts, nods) are considered phonemically stop–fricative sequences because they usually  contain a morpheme boundary (for example, nuts = nut + s), but the sounds are phonetically affricates. The English affricate phonemes and  are generally not at a morpheme boundary. However, depending on dialect, English speakers do distinguish affricates from stop–fricative sequences:


 * cat shit →
 * catch it →

Here debuccalizes to a glottal stop before  in many dialects, making it phonetically distinct from.

The acoustic difference between affricates and stop–fricative sequences is rate of amplitude increase of the frication noise, which is known as the rise time. Affricates have a short rise time to the peak frication amplitude whereas stop–fricative sequences have longer rise times (Howell & Rosen 1983, Johnson 2003, Mitani et al. 2006).

List of affricates
In the case of coronals, the symbols $⟨⟩$ are normally used for the stop portion of the affricate regardless of place. For example, is commonly seen for.

The exemplar languages are ones that these sounds have been reported from, but in several cases they may need confirmation.

Sibilant affricates
The Northwest Caucasian languages Abkhaz and Ubykh both contrast sibilant affricates at four places of articulation: alveolar, postalveolar, alveolo-palatal and retroflex. They also distinguish voiceless, voiced, and ejective affricates at each of these.

When a language only has one type of affricate, it is usually a sibilant; this is the case in e.g. some Arabic dialects, most dialects of Spanish , and Thai.

Heterorganic affricates
Although most affricates are homorganic, Navajo and Chiricahua Apache have a heterorganic alveolar-velar affricate (McDonough & Ladefoged 1993, Hoijer & Opler 1938). Other heterorganic affricates are reported for Northern Sotho (Johnson 2003) and other Bantu languages such as Phuthi, which has alveolar–labiodental affricates and, and Sesotho, which has bilabial–palatoalveolar afficates  and. Djeoromitxi (Pies 1992) has and.

Phonation, coarticulation and other variants
The more common of the voiceless affricates are all attested as ejectives as well:. Several Khoisan languages such as !Xóõ are reported to have voiced ejective affricates, but these may actually be consonant clusters:. Affricates are also commonly aspirated:, occasionally murmured: , and sometimes prenasalized:. Labialized, palatalized, velarized, and pharyngealized affricates also occur. Affricates may also have phonemic length, that is, affected by a chroneme, as in Italian and Karelian.