ʂ
| Voiceless retroflex sibilant | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| ʂ | |||
| IPA number | 136 | ||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | ʂ |
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| Unicode (hex) | U+0282 | ||
| X-SAMPA | s` |
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| Kirshenbaum | s. |
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| Braille |
 
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| Sound | |||
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The voiceless retroflex sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʂ⟩. Like all the retroflex consonants, the IPA letter is formed by adding a rightward-pointing hook to the bottom of the ess (the letter used for the corresponding alveolar consonant). A distinction can be made between laminal, apical, and sub-apical articulations. Only one language, Toda, appears to have more than one voiceless retroflex sibilant, and it distinguishes subapical palatal from apical postalveolar retroflex sibilants; that is, both the tongue articulation and the place of contact on the roof of the mouth are different.
Some scholars transcribe the laminal variant of this sound as /ʃ/, even though it is not palatalized. In such cases the voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant is transcribed /ʃʲ/.
Features of the voiceless retroflex fricative:
In the following transcriptions, diacritics may be used to distinguish between apical [ʂ̺] and laminal [ʂ̻].
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