A 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 and . The tie bar may be omitted, yielding . This affricate also has an affricate ligature , approved for inclusion in Unicode 18.
This sound is the non-sibilant equivalent of the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate.
A 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.
Features of a voiceless palatal affricate:
It is not a sibilant.
There is also a voiceless post-palatal or pre-velar affricate, 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 , (both symbols denote a retracted ), (advanced ), or (palatalized /, though this is more ambiguous than the others; see below).
Features of a voiceless post-palatal or pre-velar affricate:
It is not a sibilant.