Voiced palatal fricative

The voiced palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is $\langle\rangle$ (crossed-tail j), or in broad transcription $\langle\rangle$, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j\.

The voiced palatal fricative is a very rare sound, occurring in only seven of the 317 languages surveyed by the original UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database. In four of the languages listed below (Kabyle, Margi, Modern Greek, and Scottish Gaelic) this sound occurs phonemically along with its voiceless counterpart and in several more as a result of phonological processes.

There is also a voiced post-palatal fricative (also called pre-velar, fronted velar etc.) in some languages.