Voiceless retroflex affricate

The voiceless retroflex sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨t̠&#865;ʂ⟩, sometimes simplified to ⟨tʂ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is. Its apical variant is ⟨ʈ̺͡ʂ̺⟩ and laminal variant ⟨ʈ̻͡ʂ̻⟩.

The affricate occurs in a number of languages:
 * Asturian: Speakers of the western dialects of this language use it instead of the voiced palatal fricative, writing Ḷ|ḷḷ instead of ll.
 * Slavic languages: Polish, Belarusian, Old Czech, Serbo-Croatian; some speakers of Russian may use it instead of the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate.
 * a number of Northwest Caucasian languages have retroflex affricates that contrast in secondary articulations like labialization.
 * Mandarin and other Sinitic languages.

Features
Features of the voiceless retroflex affricate:


 * Its place of articulation is retroflex, which prototypically means, but more generally, it means that it is postalveolar without being palatalized. That is, besides the prototypical subapical articulation, the tongue contact can be apical (pointed) or laminal (flat).