Voiced retroflex fricative

A voiced retroflex 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 ⟨ʐ⟩. Like all the retroflex consonants, the IPA symbol is formed by adding a rightward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of a z (the letter used for the corresponding alveolar consonant).

Voiced retroflex fricative
ʐ
IPA number	137
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʐ
Unicode (hex)	U+0290
X-SAMPA	z`
Braille
Image

Features

Schematic mid-sagittal section

Features of a voiced retroflex sibilant:

• 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 retroflex, which prototypically means it is articulated subapical (with the tip of the tongue curled up), but more generally, it means that it is postalveolar without being palatalized. That is, besides the prototypical subapical articulation, the tongue can be apical (pointed) or, in some fricatives, laminal (flat).
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means that air is not allowed to escape through the nose.
• 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.
• Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air only with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

In the following transcriptions, diacritics may be used to distinguish between apical [ʐ̺] and laminal [ʐ̻].

The frequency of [ʐ] cross-linguistically is 2% in a phonological analysis of 2155 languages.^[1]

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Abkhaz		абжа/abža	[ˈabʐa]	'half'	See Abkhaz phonology
Adyghe		жъы / jı / ظہـ	[ʐ̻ə]ⓘ	'old'	Laminal.
Awetí[2]		[pɨtiˈʐɨk˺]		'to pray'	Diachronically related to [ɾ] and also to some other alveolar sounds in certain occasions. As word lists created in the 1900s appoint for [ɾ] where there is [ʐ] now, the latter sound is supposed to be the result of a very recent sound change that is analogically happening in Waurá.[2]
Chinese	Mandarin	肉/ròu	[ʐoʊ̯˥˩]ⓘ	'meat'	Also transcribed as a retroflex approximant [ɻ] depending on accent and dialect. See Mandarin phonology.
	Changshu dialect	常熟	/dʐan ʐɔʔ/ [tʂʱä̃233 ʐɔʔ23] (without tone sandhi)	'Changshu'	Pronounced [ʂʱ] when occurring at the first syllable. A native Wu Chinese speaker may reduce it a sound closer to a retroflex approximant [ɻ] (similar to the Standard Mandarin r) when trying to force a unnatural voiced pronunciation on the first syllable.
Faroese		renn	[ʐɛn]	'run'
Lower Sorbian[3][4]		Łužyca	[ˈwuʐɨt͡sa]	'Lusatia'
Mapudungun[5]		rayen	[ʐɜˈjën]	'flower'	May be [ɻ] or [ɭ] instead.[5]
Marrithiyel	Marri Tjevin dialect	[wiˈɲaʐu]		'they are laughing'	Voicing is non-contrastive.
Mehináku[6]		[ɨˈʐũte]		'parrot'	Resulted from the voicing of /ʂ/ in between vowels.[6]
Pashto	Southern dialect	تږى/tâjai‎	[ˈtəʐai]	'thirsty'	See Pashto phonology
Polish	Standard[7]	żona	[ˈʐ̻ɔn̪ä]ⓘ	'wife'	Also represented orthographically by ⟨rz⟩ and, when written so, may be instead pronounced as the raised alveolar non-sonorant trill by few speakers.[8] It is transcribed as /ʒ/ by most Polish scholars. See Polish phonology
	Southeastern Cuyavian dialects[9]	zapłacił	[ʐäˈpwät͡ɕiw]	'he paid'	Some speakers. It is a result of hypercorrecting the more popular merger of /ʐ/ and /z/ into [z] (see Szadzenie).
	Suwałki dialect[10]
Romagnol		diṣ	[ˈdiːʐ]	'ten'	Apical; may be [z̺ʲ] or [ʒ] instead.
Russian	Standard[7]	жена/žená	[ʐɨ̞ˈna]ⓘ	'wife'	Concave apical postalveolar, no true subapicality as expected from retroflexes.[11] Tend to be labialised and/ or velarised.[12] See Russian phonology
	Most speakers in most words	заезжа́ть/ zajezžátʹ	[zə(j)ɪˈʐːatʲ]ⓘ	'to call in casually /to drive into'	Modern pronunciation of older /ʑː/ often derived from underlying /zʐ/ or /sʐ/. Subsists as such in some words for conservative Moskovite accents.[12]
Serbo-Croatian		жут / žut	[ʐûːt̪]	'yellow'	Typically transcribed as /ʒ/. See Serbo-Croatian phonology
Shina	Gilgiti[13]	ڙَکُݨ / ẓakuṇ	[ʐəkuɳ]	'donkey'
	Kohistani
Slovak[14]		žaba	[ˈʐäbä]	'frog'
Spanish	Andean	hacer	[a'seʐ]	'do'	The phoneme /r/ changes to [ʐ], when it is at the end of a syllable
		marrón, ratón	[maˈʐon], [ʐa'ton]	'brown', 'mouse'	See Spanish phonology
Swedish	Central dialects[15]	rå	[ʐʊə̰̑˧˥˨]ⓘ	'raw'	Apical. Allophone of rhotic, may also be pronounced [ɹ], [r] or [ɾ].[15][16] See Swedish phonology
Taruma[17]		hoza	[ˈho.ʐa]	'rain'	Main allophone of a marginal retroflex phoneme, with [ɖʐ] as quasi-allohpone word initially before /ɨ/.[17]
Tilquiapan Zapotec[18]		?	[ʐan]	'bottom'
Torwali[19]		ݜوڙ	[ʂuʐ]	'straight'
Ubykh		[ʐa]		'firewood'	See Ubykh phonology
Ukrainian		жaбa/žaba	[ˈʐɑbɐ]	'frog'	See Ukrainian phonology
Upper Sorbian	Some dialects[20][21]	[example needed]			Used in dialects spoken in villages north of Hoyerswerda; corresponds to [ʒ] in the standard language.[3]
Yi		ꏜ ry	[ʐʐ̩˧]	'grass'

Voiced retroflex non-sibilant fricative

Voiced retroflex non-sibilant fricative
ɻ˔
IPA number	152 429
Audio sample
source · help
Encoding
X-SAMPA	r\`_r

Features

Features of a voiced retroflex non-sibilant fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is retroflex, which prototypically means it is articulated subapical (with the tip of the tongue curled up), but more generally, it means that it is postalveolar without being palatalized. That is, besides the prototypical subapical articulation, the tongue can be apical (pointed) or, in some fricatives, laminal (flat).
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means that air is not allowed to escape through the nose.
• 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.
• Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air only with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
English	Eastern Cape[22]	red	[ɻ˔ed]	'red'	Apical; typical realization of /r/ in that region.[22] See South African English phonology

See also

• Index of phonetics articles
• Voiced postalveolar fricative
• Voiceless retroflex fricative