Voiceless palatal approximant

Some scholars also posit the voiceless palatal approximant distinct from the fricative, found in a few spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ j̊ ⟩, the voiceless homologue of the voiced palatal approximant.

Voiceless palatal approximant
j̊
IPA number	153 402A
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	j​̊
Unicode (hex)	U+006A U+030A
X-SAMPA	j_0

The palatal approximant can in many cases be considered the semivocalic equivalent of the voiceless variant of the close front unrounded vowel [i̥]. The sound is essentially an Australian English ⟨y⟩ (as in year) pronounced strictly without vibration of the vocal cords.

Occurrence

It is found as a phoneme in Jalapa Mazatec and Washo as well as in Kildin Sami.

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Breton	Bothoa dialect	[example needed]			Contrasts voiceless /j̊/, plain voiced /j/ and nasal voiced /ȷ̃/ approximants.[1]
Chinese	Standard	票 / piào	[pj̊äʊ̯˥˩]	'ticket'	Common allophony of /j/ after aspirated consonants. Normally transcribed as [pʰj]. See Standard Chinese phonology
English	Australian	huge	[j̊ʉːdʒ]	'huge'	H-dropping, also allophone of /j/. See Australian English phonology[2][3]
	New Zealand		[j̊ʉ(ː)dʒ]		H-dropping, also allophone of /j/, also can be [ç] instead. See New Zealand English phonology[4][3]
French		pierre	[pj̊ʲɛːʀ̝̊]ⓘ	'stone'	Devoice allophone of /j/. See French phonology[5]
Icelandic		hérna	[ˈj̊ɛ(ɾ)tnä]	'here'	Dialectal, or in free variation with [ç][6][7][8][9][10]
Jalapa Mazatec[11]		[example needed]			Contrasts voiceless /j̊/, plain voiced /j/ and glottalized voiced /ȷ̃/ approximants.[11]
Japanese		日 / hi	[j̊i]	'day'	Colloquial, Allophone of /j/[12][13][14]
Scottish Gaelic[15]		a-muigh	[əˈmuj̊]	'outside' (directional)	Allophone of /j/ and /ʝ/. See Scottish Gaelic phonology
Thai		[example needed]			Allophone of /j/.[16]
Tibetan	Khams				Phonemic[17]
Washo		t'á:Yaŋi	[ˈtʼaːj̊aŋi]	'he's hunting'	Contrasts voiceless /j̊/ and voiced /j/ approximants.
Koyukon (Denaakk'e)		[example needed]			Contrasts voiceless /j̊/ and voiced /j/ approximants.