The voiceless alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described.

IPA – number	132
IPA – text	s
IPA – image	s
Entity	s
X-SAMPA	s
Kirshenbaum	s
Sound sample (help·info)

• The symbol for the alveolar sibilant is s, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is s. The IPA symbol [s] is not normally used for dental or postalveolar sibilants unless modified by a diacritic ([s̪] and [s̠] respectively).
• The IPA symbol for the alveolar non-sibilant fricative is derived by means of diacritics; it can be θ̠ or ɹ̝̊, or it can be [θ͇], using the alveolar diacritic from the Extended IPA. ^[1]

Coronal fricatives

	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar
				retroflex	palato- alveolar	alveolo- palatal
sibilant	s̪	s͇	s̠	ʂ	ʃ	ɕ
non-sibilant	θ	θ̠/θ͇/ɹ̝̊		ɻ̝̊

Contents 1 Voiceless alveolar sibilant 1.1 Features 1.2 Occurrence 2 Voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative 2.1 Features 2.2 Occurrence 3 See also 4 References 5 Bibliography

Voiceless alveolar sibilant

The voiceless alveolar sibilant is one of the most common consonants. If a language has fricatives, it will most likely have an [s].^[2] However, [s] is absent from Australian Aboriginal languages, where fricatives are rare, and the few languages that have developed fricatives do not have sibilants.

Features

Features of the voiceless alveolar sibilant:

• Its manner of articulation is sibilant fricative, which means it is produced by directing air flow through a groove in the tongue at the place of articulation and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
• Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Occurrence

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

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Arabic	Modern Standard [3]	جلس	[ˈdʒalisɐ]	'to sit'	See Arabic phonology
Basque		zu	[s̻u]	'you'
		su	[s̺u]	'fire'
Burmese		?	[sə sá bjì]	'I am eating now'
Catalan [4][5]		sis	[s̺is̺]	'six'	See Catalan phonology
Chinese	Mandarin	三/sān	[sɑn˥]	'three'	See Standard Mandarin
Czech		svět	[svjɛt]	'world'	See Czech phonology
Dutch [6]		steen	[sten]	'stone'	See Dutch phonology
English		sand	[sænd]	'sand'	See English phonology
Faroese		sandur	[sandʊɹ]	'sand'
Finnish		sinä	[sinæ]	'you (sg.)	See Finnish phonology
French [7]		façade	[fasad]	'front'	See French phonology
Galician		tres	[tɾes̺]	'three'
Georgian [8]		სამი	[ˈsɑmi]	'three'
German		Biss	[bɪs]	'bite'	See German phonology
Greek	Athens dialect [9]	σαν	[s̻an]	'as'	See Modern Greek phonology
Hindi		साल	[saːl]	'year'	See Hindi- Urdu phonology
Hungarian		sziget	[sigɛt]	'island'	See Hungarian phonology
Italian [10]		sali	[ˈsali]	'you go up'	See Italian phonology
Japanese [11]		???/fukusūkē	[ɸɯkɯsɯːkeː]	'plural'	See Japanese phonology
Korean		소/so	[so]	'ox'	See Korean phonology
Norwegian		sand	[sɑn]	'sand'	See Norwe- gian phonology
Occitan	Gascon	dos	[dys̺]	'two'
	Langue-docien		[dus̺]
	Limousin	maichent	[mejˈsẽ]	'bad'
Polish [12]		sum	[s̪um]	'catfish'	See Polish phonology
Portuguese [13]		caço	[ˈkasu]	'I hunt'	See Portu-guese phonology
Russian [14]		волосы	[ˈvoləsɨ]	'hair'	Contrasts with palatalized form. See Russian phonology
Spanish [15]	Latin American	saltador	[s̻al̪t̪aˈð̞o̞ɾ]	'jumper'	See Spanish phonology and seseo.
	Peninsular		[s̺al̪t̪aˈð̞o̞ɾ]
Turkish		su	[su]	'water'	See Turkish phonology
Vietnamese		se	[sɛ]	'be almost dry'	Variety: [ʂɛ]. See Vietna-mese phonology

Voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative

Features

The features of the voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative are identical to those above, except that,

• Its manner of articulation is simple fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence, but without the grooved tongue and directed airflow, or the high frequencies, of a sibilant.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
English	Scouse[16]	attain	[əˈθ̠eɪn]	'attain'	Allophone of /t/ See English phonology
Icelandic		þakið	[θ̠akið̠]	'roof'	See Icelandic phonology

See also

• Apical consonant
• Laminal consonant
• List of phonetics topics

References

Bibliography

• Adams, Douglas Q. (1975), "The Distribution of Retracted Sibilants in Medieval Europe", Language 51 (2): 282-292
• Carbonell, Joan F. & Joaquim Llisterri (1992), "Catalan", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (1-2): 53-56
• Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 25 (2): 90-94
• Fougeron, Cecile & Caroline L Smith (1993), "Illustrations of the IPA:French", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 23 (2): 73-76
• Gussenhoven, Carlos (1992), "Dutch", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (2): 45-47
• Honeybone, P (2001), "Lenition inhibition in Liverpool English", English Language and Linguistics 5 (2): 213-249
• Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (1): 103-107
• Jones, Daniel & Ward Dennis (1969), The Phonetics of Russian, Cambridge University Press
• Maddieson, Ian (1984), Patterns of Sound, Camebridge University Press
• Marotta, Giovanna & Marlen Barth (2005), "Acoustic and sociolingustic aspects of lenition in Liverpool English", Studi Linguistici e Filologici Online 3 (2): 377-413
• Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Ana Ma. Fernández-Planas & Josefina Carrera-Sabaté (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255-259
• Okada, Hideo (1991), "Phonetic Representation:Japanese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 21 (2): 94-97
• Pandeli, H; J Eska & Martin Ball et al., "Problems of phonetic transcription: the case of the Hiberno-English slit-t", Journal of the International Phonetic Association'' 27: 65-75
• Recasens, Daniel & Maria Dolores Pallarès (2001), "Coarticulation, Assimilation and Blending in Catalan Consonant Clusters", Journal of Phonetics 29 (3): 273-301
• Rogers, Derek & Luciana d'Arcangeli (2004), "Italian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (1): 117-121
• Shosted, Ryan K. & Chikovani Vakhtang (2006), "Standard Georgian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 36 (2): 255-264
• Thelwall, Robin (1990), "Illustrations of the IPA: Arabic", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 20 (2): 37-41
• Torreblanca, Máximo (1988), "Latín Basium, Castellano Beso, Catalán Bes, Portugués Beijo", Hispanic Review 56 (3): 343-348