Voiced palatal fricative

The voiced palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that represents this sound is ⟨ʝ⟩ (crossed-tail j), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is. It is the non-sibilant equivalent of the voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant.

In broad transcription, the symbol for the palatal approximant, ⟨j⟩, may be used for the sake of simplicity.

The voiced palatal fricative is a very rare sound, occurring in only 7 of the 317 languages surveyed by the original UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database. In Dutch, Kabyle, Margi, Modern Greek, and Scottish Gaelic, the sound occurs phonemically, along with its voiceless counterpart, and in several more, the sound occurs as a result of phonological processes.

To produce this sound, the tip of the tongue is placed against the roof of the mouth behind the upper front teeth; then, while exhaling, the space between the tongue and the palate is narrowed, creating a friction-like sound similar to the $⟨s⟩$ sound (IPA: Voiced postalveolar fricative) in the English word leisure.

There is also the voiced post-palatal fricative in some languages, which is articulated slightly more back compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical voiced palatal fricative but not as back as the prototypical voiced velar fricative. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, but it can be transcribed as ⟨ʝ̠⟩, ⟨ʝ˗⟩ (both symbols denote a retracted ⟨ʝ⟩), ⟨ɣ̟⟩ or ⟨ɣ˖⟩ (both symbols denote an advanced ⟨ɣ⟩). The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are  and , respectively.

Especially in broad transcription, the voiced post-palatal fricative may be transcribed as a palatalized voiced velar fricative (⟨ɣʲ⟩ in the IPA,  or   in X-SAMPA).

Features
Features of the voiced palatal fricative:

The otherwise identical post-palatal variant is articulated slightly behind the hard palate, making it sound slightly closer to the velar.