The voiced palato-alveolar fricative or domed postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʒ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is Z. An alternative commonly used in linguistic works, particularly in older or American literature, is ž.
Voiced postalveolar fricative - Features.
Features of the voiced postalveolar frica ...
The voiced postalveolar fricative occurs in English, although in only a handful of words, and is the sound denoted by the letter 's' in treasure and the final sound of the word mirage. One of the very few minimal contrasts of the voiced and voiceless postalveolar fricatives (for some dialects only) is the pair of words allusion and Aleutian. It usually occurs medially, but may occur word-initially or word-finally in relatively recent borrowings from French.
In English the sound is labialized, [ʒʷ], a ...
The sound is more common in French, where it is represented by the letter j. The French consonant is labialized, [ʒʷ], as in English.
It also occurs in Russian and Bulgarian as a realization of /ʐ/, represented by the letter Ж (zhe).
It also occurs in Croatian, where it is represented by the letter ž.
It also occurs in Esperanto, represented by the letter ...
