An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. English has two affricate phonemes, and, often spelled ch and j, respectively.

Examples

The English sounds spelled "ch" and "j" (broadly transcribed as and in the IPA), German and Italian z and Italian z are typical affricates, and sounds like these are fairly common in the world's languages, as are other affricates with similar sounds, such as those in Polish and Chinese. However, voiced affricates other than are relatively uncommon. For several places of articulation they are not attested at all. Much less common are labiodental affricates, such as in German, Kinyarwanda and Izi, or velar affricates, such as in Tswana (written kg) or in High Alemannic Swiss German dialects. Worldwide, relatively few languages have affricates in these positions even though the corresponding stop consonants, and, are common or virtually universal. Also less common are alveolar affricates where the fricative release 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 whose release may be dental, alveolar, postalveolar, or lateral:, , , , , , , , , , , 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 it is more legible. Thus: or A less common notation indicates 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 sibilant affricates, which remain in common use: Approved for Unicode in 2024, per request from the IPA, are the remaining coronal affricates: Any of these notations can be used to distinguish an affricate from a sequence of a stop plus a fricative, which is contrastive in languages such as Polish. However, in languages where there is no such distinction, such as English or Turkish, a simple sequence of letters is commonly used, with no overt indication that they form an affricate. In other phonetic transcription systems, such as the Americanist system, affricates may be transcribed with single letters. The affricate may be transcribed as ⟨c⟩ or ⟨¢⟩; as ⟨j⟩, ⟨ƶ⟩ or (older) ⟨ʒ⟩; as ⟨c⟩ or ⟨č⟩; as ⟨ǰ⟩, ⟨ǧ⟩ or (older) ⟨ǯ⟩; as ⟨ƛ⟩; and as ⟨λ⟩. This also happens with phonemic transcription in IPA: and are sometimes transcribed with the symbols for the palatal stops, ⟨c⟩ and ⟨ɟ⟩, for example in the IPA Handbook.

Affricates vs. stop–fricative sequences

In some languages, affricates contrast phonemically with stop–fricative sequences: The exact phonetic difference varies between languages. In stop–fricative sequences, the stop has a release burst before the fricative starts; but in affricates, the fricative element is the release. Phonologically, 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. They often contain a morpheme boundary (for example, nuts = nut + s). The English affricate phonemes and do not contain morpheme boundaries. The phonemic distinction in English between the affricate and the stop–fricative sequence (found across syllable boundaries) can be observed by minimal pairs such as the following: In some accents of English, the in 'worst shin' debuccalizes to a glottal stop before. Stop–fricatives can be distinguished acoustically from affricates by the rise time of the frication noise, which is shorter for affricates.

List of affricates

In the case of coronals, the symbols ⟨t, d⟩ are normally used for the stop portion of the affricate regardless of place. For example, ⟨t͡ʂ⟩ is commonly seen for ⟨ʈ͡ʂ⟩. The exemplar languages are ones that have been reported to have these sounds, 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 has only one type of affricate, it is usually a sibilant; this is the case in e.g. Arabic, most dialects of Spanish , and Thai.

Non-sibilant affricates

Lateral affricates

Trilled affricates

Pirahã and Wari' have a dental stop with bilabial trilled release.

Heterorganic affricates

Although most affricates are homorganic, Navajo and Chiricahua Apache have a heterorganic alveolar-velar affricate. [Wari'](https://bliptext.com/articles/wari-language) and [Pirahã](https://bliptext.com/articles/pirah-language) have a voiceless dental bilabially trilled affricate [t̪ʙ̥] (see ), Blackfoot has. Other heterorganic affricates are reported for Northern Sotho and other Bantu languages such as Phuthi, which has alveolar–labiodental affricates and, and Sesotho, which has bilabial–palatoalveolar affricates and. Djeoromitxi has and.

Phonation, coarticulation and other variants

The coronal and dorsal places of articulation attested as ejectives as well:. Several Khoisan languages such as Taa are reported to have voiced ejective affricates, but these are actually pre-voiced:. Affricates are also commonly aspirated:, murmured: , and prenasalized: (as in Hmong). Labialized, palatalized, velarized, and pharyngealized affricates are also common. Affricates may also have phonemic length, that is, affected by a chroneme, as in Italian and Karelian.

Phonological representation

In phonology, affricates tend to behave similarly to stops, taking part in phonological patterns that fricatives do not. analyzes phonetic affricates as phonological stops. A sibilant or lateral (and presumably trilled) stop can be realized phonetically only as an affricate and so might be analyzed phonemically as a sibilant or lateral stop. In that analysis, affricates other than sibilants and laterals are a phonetic mechanism for distinguishing stops at similar places of articulation (like more than one labial, coronal, or dorsal place). For example, Chipewyan has laminal dental vs. apical alveolar ; other languages may contrast velar with palatal and uvular. Affricates may also be a strategy to increase the phonetic contrast between aspirated or ejective and tenuis consonants. According to, no language contrasts a non-sibilant, non-lateral affricate with a stop at the same place of articulation and with the same phonation and airstream mechanism, such as and or and. In feature-based phonology, affricates are distinguished from stops by the feature [+delayed release].

Affrication

Affrication (sometimes called affricatization) is a sound change by which a consonant, usually a stop or fricative, changes into an affricate. Examples include:

Pre-affrication

In rare instances, a fricative–stop contour may occur. This is the case in dialects of Scottish Gaelic that have velar frication where other dialects have pre-aspiration. For example, in the Harris dialect there is seachd 'seven' and ochd 'eight' (or, ). Richard Wiese argues this is the case for word-initial fricative-plosive sequences in German, and coined the term suffricate for such contours. Awngi has 2 suffricates and according to some analyses.

Sources