Voiceless palatal affricate

The voiceless palatal affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent this sound are ⟨c͡ç⟩ and ⟨c͜ç⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is c_C. The tie bar may be omitted, yielding ⟨cç⟩ in the IPA and cC in X-SAMPA.

This sound is the non-sibilant equivalent of the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate.

The voiceless palatal affricate occurs in such languages as Hungarian and Skolt Sami, among others. The consonant is quite rare; it is mostly absent from Europe (with the Uralic languages and Albanian being exceptions). It usually occurs with its voiced counterpart, the voiced palatal affricate.

There is also the voiceless post-palatal affricate^[1] in some languages, which is articulated slightly more back compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical voiceless palatal affricate, though not as back as the prototypical voiceless velar affricate. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as ⟨c̠͡ç̠⟩, ⟨c͡ç˗⟩ (both symbols denote a retracted ⟨c͡ç⟩) or ⟨k̟͡x̟⟩ (advanced ⟨k͡x⟩) - this article uses only the first symbol. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are c_-_C_- and k_+_x_+, respectively.

Especially in broad transcription, the voiceless post-palatal affricate may be transcribed as a palatalized voiceless velar affricate (⟨k͡xʲ⟩ or ⟨k͜xʲ⟩ in the IPA, k_x' or k_x_j in X-SAMPA).