Fricative consonant
Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These are the lower lip against the upper teeth in the case of [ f ], or the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German [ x ], the final consonant of Bach. This turbulent airflow is called frication. A particular subset of fricatives are the sibilants (sometimes referred to as stridents). When forming a sibilant, one still is forcing air through a narrow channel, but in addition the tongue is curled lengthwise to direct the air over the edge of the teeth. English [ s ], [ z ], [ ʃ ], and [ ʒ ] are examples of this.
Sibilant fricatives
All sibilants are coronal, but may be dental, alveolar, postalveolar, or palatal (retroflex) within that range. However, at the postalveolar place of articulation the tongue may take several shapes: domed, laminal, or apical, and each of these is given a separate symbol and a separate name. Prototypical retroflexes are sub-apical and palatal, but they are usually written with the same symbol as the apical postalveolars. The alveolars and dentals may also be either apical or laminal, but this difference is indicated with diacritics rather than with separate symbols.
Central non-sibilant fricatives
Lateral fricatives
Symbols used for both fricatives and approximants
No language distinguishes voiced fricatives from approximants at these places, so the same symbol is used for both. For the pharyngeals and epiglottals, approximants are more numerous than fricatives. A fricative realization may be specified by adding the uptack to the letters, [ʁ̝, ʕ̝, ʢ̝]. Likewise, the downtack may be added to specify an approximant realization, [ʁ̞, ʕ̞, ʢ̞].
Pseudo-fricatives
The glottal "fricatives" are actually unaccompanied phonation states of the glottis, without any accompanying manner, fricative or otherwise. However, they are called fricatives for historical reasons.
In addition, [ʍ] is usually called a "voiceless labial-velar fricative", but it is actually an approximant. True doubly-articulated fricatives do not appear to occur in any language.
Languages
See table of consonants for a table of fricatives in English.
Ubykh may be the language with the most fricatives, with 26, some of which do not have symbols or diacritics in the IPA. This number actually outstrips the number of all consonants in English (which has 24 consonants).
See also
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