How these sounds differ
ʂʼ
Voiceless Retroflex Sibilant Fricative
- Voicing
- voiceless
- Place
- retroflex
- Manner
- sibilant fricative
- Class
- consonant
- In languages
- 1 / 500
ʐ
Voiced Retroflex Sibilant Fricative
- Voicing
- voiced
- Place
- retroflex
- Manner
- sibilant fricative
- Class
- consonant
- In languages
- 14 / 500
Cross-linguistic distribution
1
Languages with ʂʼ
0
Languages with both
14
Languages with ʐ
0 languages in our database contrast both sounds as distinct phonemes. Languages that have one but not the other tend to merge them into a single phoneme — meaning speakers of those languages often struggle to hear the distinction when learning a language that contrasts them.