Alveolo-palatal ejective fricative
# Alveolo-palatal ejective fricative

The alveolo-palatal ejective fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɕʼ⟩.

## Features

Features of the alveolo-palatal ejective 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 alveolo-palatal. This means that:
   * Its place of articulation is postalveolar, meaning that the tongue contacts the roof of the mouth in the area behind the alveolar ridge (the gum line).
   * Its tongue shape is laminal, meaning that it is the tongue blade that contacts the roof of the mouth.
   * It is heavily palatalized, meaning that the middle of the tongue is bowed and raised towards the hard palate.
* Its phonation 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 only.
* 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.
* The airstream mechanism is ejective (glottalic egressive), which means the air is forced out by pumping the glottis upward.

## Occurrence

| Language | Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes |
| - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Adyghe | Abzakh | щӏэ | [ɕʼa] | 'new' | Dialectal. Corresponds to [t͡ʃʼ] in other dialects. |
| Kabardian | Kabardian | пщӀы | (help·info) | 'ten' | |
