The voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant 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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are t_s\ and c_s\, though transcribing the stop component with (c in X-SAMPA) is rare. The tie bar may be omitted, yielding or in the IPA and ts\ or cs\ in X-SAMPA. Neither nor are a completely narrow transcription of the stop component, which can be narrowly transcribed as (retracted and palatalized ) or (advanced ). The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are t_-' or t_-_j and c_+, respectively. There is also a dedicated symbol , which is not a part of the IPA. Therefore, narrow transcriptions of the voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant affricate include , and . This affricate used to have a dedicated symbol , which was one of the six dedicated symbols for affricates in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It occurs in languages such as Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Serbo-Croatian and Russian, and is the sibilant equivalent of voiceless palatal affricate. is a superscript IPA letter Features Features of the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate: Occurrence See also Index of phonetics articles Notes References External links Affricates Sibilant consonants Alveolo-palatal consonants Pulmonic consonants Voiceless oral consonants Central consonants