The voiceless alveolar sibilant is a common consonant sound in spoken languages. It is the sound in English words such as sea and pass, and is represented in the
as [s]. It has a characteristic high-pitched, highly perceptible hissing sound. For this reason, it is often used to get someone's attention, using a call often written as sssst! or psssst!.
The voiceless alveolar sibilant [s] is one of the most common sounds cross-linguistically. If a language has fricatives, it will most likely have [s]. However, some languages have a related sibilant sound, such as [ʃ], but no [s]. In addition, sibilants are absent from
, where fricatives are rare; even the few indigenous Australian languages that have developed fricatives do not have sibilants. Sibilants (or at least, sibilant fricatives) are also absent from the so-called
The term "voiceless alveolar sibilant" is potentially ambiguous in that it can refer to at least two different sounds. Various languages of northern
(e.g. Astur-Leonese,
" which lacks the strong hissing of the [s] described in this article, but rather has a duller, more "grave" sound quality somewhat reminiscent of a voiceless retroflex sibilant. Basque,
and some Portuguese dialects in northeast Portugal (as well as medieval Spanish and Portuguese in general) have both types of sounds in the same language.
There is no general agreement about what actual feature distinguishes these sounds. Spanish phoneticians normally describe the difference as (for the northern Iberian sound) vs. (for the more common sound), but Ladefoged and Maddieson claim that English /s/ can be pronounced apical, which is evidently not the same as the apical sibilant of Iberian Spanish and Basque, In addition, Adams asserts that many dialects of
have a laminal sibilant with a sound quality similar to the "apico-alveolar" sibilant of northern Iberia.
. Adams describes the northern Iberian sibilant as "retracted". Ladefoged and Maddieson appear to characterize the more common hissing variant as , and some phoneticians (e.g. J. Catford) have characterized it as sulcal (which is more or less a synonym of "grooved"), but in both cases there is some doubt about whether all and only the "hissing" sounds in fact have a "grooved" or "sulcal" tongue shape.
| Language | Word | IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
| Meaning | Notes |
ArabicArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
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Modern Standard Modern Standard Arabic , Standard Arabic, or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in most formal speech....
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[ˈdʒælæsɐ] |
'to sit' |
See Arabic phonology While many languages have numerous dialects that differ in pronunciation, the Arabic language is more properly described as a continuum of varieties. This article deals primarily with Modern Standard Arabic, which is the standard variety shared by educated speakers throughout Arabic-speaking regions...
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| Armenian The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
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'mountain' |
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| Basque Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
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[s̻u] |
'you' |
Contrasts with /s̺/ |
| Burmese The Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the constitution officially recognizes it as the Myanmar language, most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese. Burmese is the native language of the Bamar and related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar, as well as...
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[sə sá bjì] |
'I am eating now' |
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ChineseThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
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Cantonese |
閃/sim2 |
[siːm˧˥] |
'twinkle' |
See Cantonese phonology The standard pronunciation of the Cantonese language is that of Guangzhou, also known as Canton, the capital of Guangdong Province. Hong Kong Cantonese is related to the Guangzhou dialect, and the two diverge only slightly...
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| Mandarin |
三/sān |
[san˥] |
'three' |
See Mandarin phonology The phonology of Standard Chinese is reproduced below. Actual production varies widely among speakers, as people inadvertently introduce elements of their native dialects...
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CzechCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
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[svjɛt] |
'world' |
See Czech phonologyThis article discusses the phonological system of the Czech language- Vowels :There are 10 vowel phonemes in Czech. 5 of them are short and 5 are long. The duration of the long vowels is approximately double in comparison with their short counterparts. Long and short vowels form minimal pairs. The...
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DanishDanish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
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[ˈsɛljə] |
'sell' |
See Danish phonology - Consonants :Modern Standard Danish has the following 21 consonants:The Danish allophones can be analyzed into 15 distinctive consonant phonemes, , where have different pronunciation in syllable onset vs. syllable coda....
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DutchDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
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[steːn] |
'stone' |
See Dutch phonologyDutch is a Germanic language and as such has a similar phonology to other Germanic languages...
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| English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
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[sænd] |
'sand' |
See English phonology English phonology is the study of the sound system of the English language. Like many languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect...
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FaroeseFaroese , is an Insular Nordic language spoken by 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 25,000 Faroese people in Denmark and elsewhere...
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[sandʊɹ] |
'sand' |
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FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
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[sinæ] |
'you (sg.)' |
See Finnish phonology Unless otherwise noted, statements in this article refer to Standard Finnish, which is based on the dialect spoken in Häme Province in central south Finland. Standard Finnish is used by professional speakers, such as the reporters and the news presenters on television.-Vowels:Phonetically, the...
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FrenchFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
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[fasad] |
'front' |
See French phonologyThis article mainly discusses the phonological system of standard French based on the Parisian dialect. French is notable for its uvular r, nasal vowels, and three processes affecting word-final sounds: liaison, a certain type of sandhi, wherein word-final consonants are not pronounced unless...
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| Georgian Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
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[ˈsɑmi] |
'three' |
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| German German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
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[bɪs] |
'bite' |
See German phonology This article is about the phonology of the German language based on standard German. It deals with current phonology and phonetics as well as with historical developments thereof, including geographical variants .Since German is a pluricentric language, there are a number of different...
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| Greek Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
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Athens dialect |
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[s̻an] |
'as' |
See Modern Greek phonology This page presents a sketch of the phonology of Standard Modern Greek.-Consonants:The consonantal system of Greek is difficult to describe, as there is considerable debate about which sounds to describe as separate phonemes and which to analyse as conditional allophones...
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| Hindi Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
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[saːl] |
'year' |
See Hindi-Urdu phonologyModern Standard Hindi is the official language of India, while Urdu is the national language of Pakistan as well as a scheduled language in India...
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HungarianHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
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[siɡɛt] |
'island' |
See Hungarian phonologyHungarian phonology is notable for its process of vowel harmony, the frequent use of geminate consonants and the presence of otherwise uncommon palatal stops.- Consonants :...
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ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
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[ˈsali] |
'you go up' |
See Italian phonologyThis article is about the phonology of the Italian language. It deals with the phonology and phonetics of Standard Italian as well as with geographical variants.-Vowels:Notes:*In Italian there is no phonemic distinction between long and short vowels...
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Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
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/ |
[ɸɯkɯsɯːkeː] |
'plural' |
See Japanese phonologyThis article deals with the phonology of the Japanese language.-Consonants:The Japanese vowels are pronounced as monophthongs, unlike in English; except for , they are similar to their Spanish or Italian counterparts....
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| Korean Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
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[so] |
'ox' |
See Korean phonologyThis article is a technical description of the phonetics and phonology of Korean.Korean has many allophones, so it is important here to distinguish morphophonemics from corresponding phonemes and allophones .-Consonants:The following are phonemic transcriptions of Korean consonants.# are voiced ...
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| Malay Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
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[satu] |
'one' |
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| Maltese Maltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...
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[eaˈbes] |
'hard' |
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NorwegianNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
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[sɑn] |
'sand' |
See Norwegian phonology The sound system of Norwegian resembles that of Swedish. There is considerable variation among the dialects, but the variant generally taught to foreign students is Standard Eastern Norwegian, which is the one described in this article.-Consonants:...
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| Occitan |
Limousin Limousin is a dialect of the Occitan language, spoken in the three departments of Limousin, parts of Charente and the Dordogne in the southwest of France.The first Occitan documents are in this dialect, particularly the Boecis, written around the year 1000....
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maichentThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
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[mejˈsẽ] |
'bad' |
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| Polish Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
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'catfish' |
See Polish phonologyThe phonological system of the Polish language is similar in many ways to those of other Slavic languages, although there are some characteristic features found in only a few other languages of the family, such as contrasting retroflex and palatal fricatives and affricates, and nasal vowels...
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PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
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[ˈkasu] |
'I hunt' |
See Portuguese phonologyThe phonology of Portuguese can vary considerably between dialects, in extreme cases leading to difficulties in intelligibility. This article focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard...
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RomanianRomanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
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[s̪urd] |
'deaf' |
See Romanian phonology This article discusses the phonology of the Romanian language. For other details on this language the reader is referred to that article....
. |
RussianRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
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[ˈvoləsɨ] |
'hair' |
Contrasts with palatalized In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
form. See Russian phonologyThis article discusses the phonological system of standard Russian based on the Moscow dialect . For discussion of other dialects, see Russian dialects...
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SlovakSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
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[svɛt] |
'world' |
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SpanishSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
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Latin American |
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[s̻al̪t̪aˈð̞o̞r] |
'jumper' |
See Spanish phonology This article is about the phonology and phonetics of the Spanish language. Unless otherwise noted, statements refer to Castilian Spanish, the standard dialect used in Spain on radio and television. For historical development of the sound system see History of Spanish...
and seseo |
| Toda Toda is a Dravidian language well known for its many fricatives and trills. It is spoken by the Toda people, a population of about one thousand who live in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India.-Vowels:...
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kɔs̪ |
'money' |
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| Turkish Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
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[su] |
'water' |
See Turkish phonologyThe phonology of the Turkish language describes the set of sounds and their relationships with one another in spoken Turkish. One characteristic feature of Turkish is a system of vowel harmony that distinguishes between front and back vowels. The majority of words in Turkish adhere to a system of...
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UkrainianUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
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[sɛˈlɔ] |
'village' |
See Ukrainian phonology This article deals with the phonology of the Ukrainian language.-Vowels: may be classified as retracted high-mid front vowel or lowered retracted high front vowel; is middle vowel , backness is classified as advanced back....
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| Urdu Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
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[saːl] |
'year' |
See Hindi-Urdu phonologyModern Standard Hindi is the official language of India, while Urdu is the national language of Pakistan as well as a scheduled language in India...
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VietnameseVietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
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[suə˧˩˧] |
'spring' |
See Vietnamese phonologyThis article is a technical description of the sound system of the Vietnamese language, including phonetics and phonology.-Consonants:Two main varieties of Vietnamese, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, are described below.-Hanoi:...
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West FrisianWest Frisian is a language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands. West Frisian is the name by which this language is usually known outside the Netherlands, to distinguish it from the closely related Frisian languages of Saterland Frisian and North Frisian,...
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[sɔːt] |
'salt' |
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YiNuosu , also known as Northern Yi, Liangshan Yi, and Sichuan Yi, is the prestige language of the Yi people; it has been chosen by the Chinese government as the standard Yi language and, as such, is the only one taught in school, both in its oral and written form...
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/ |
[sɿ˧] |
'die' |
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