Fricative facts for kids

A fricative is a type of consonant sound. You make it by pushing air through a narrow space in your mouth. This narrow space creates a "hissing" or "friction" sound. Think of the sound of the letter 'f' in "fine" or 's' in "sip".

To make a fricative, you bring two parts of your mouth very close together. For example, you might place your lower lip against your upper teeth (like for the 'f' sound). Or you might put the back of your tongue near the roof of your mouth (like the 'ch' sound in the Scottish word "loch"). This forced, turbulent airflow is called frication.

A special group of fricatives are called sibilants. When you make a sibilant sound, you still push air through a narrow channel. But you also curl your tongue lengthwise to direct the air over the edge of your teeth. English sounds like 's' (as in "sip"), 'z' (as in "zip"), 'sh' (as in "ship"), and 'zh' (as in "vision") are all sibilants.

How Fricatives Are Made

When you make a fricative consonant, the airflow from your lungs is not completely stopped. Instead, it's squeezed through a tight opening in your mouth. This squeezing causes the air to create a noisy, turbulent sound, which is the "friction" you hear.

Sibilant Sounds

Sibilants are the loudest and most common type of fricative. They have a distinct "hissing" or "shushing" quality. Here are some examples you might know:

• [s] as in English sip (a voiceless sibilant)
• [z] as in English zip (a voiced sibilant)
• [ʃ] as in English ship (a voiceless sibilant)
• [ʒ] as in English vision (a voiced sibilant)

All sibilants are made using the front part of your tongue (the "coronal" part). They can be made in different spots, like at your teeth (dental), just behind your teeth (alveolar), or further back (postalveolar or retroflex).

Other Fricative Sounds

Besides sibilants, there are many other fricative sounds made in different parts of the mouth. Here are a few common ones:

• [f] as in English fine (made with lips and teeth)
• [v] as in English vine (also made with lips and teeth, but with voice)
• [θ] as in English thing (made with the tongue near the teeth, no voice)
• [ð] as in English that (made with the tongue near the teeth, with voice)
• [x] as in the German name Bach (made with the back of the tongue near the soft palate)
• [h] as in English hat (made in the throat, often called a "glottal fricative")

Some languages also have lateral fricatives. For these, air flows over the sides of your tongue, not just the middle. An example is the 'll' sound in the Welsh name Llanelli ([ɬ]).

Where Fricatives Are Found

Fricatives are very common sounds in languages around the world. However, some languages have many more fricatives than others. For example, the now-extinct Ubykh language had 29 different fricative sounds! That's more than all the consonants in English (which has 24).

On the other hand, about 8.7% of the world's languages don't have any fricative sounds at all. Many Australian Aboriginal languages are like this.

Languages in Europe, Africa, and Western Asia often have both voiced (like 'z' or 'v') and voiceless (like 's' or 'f') fricatives. But in places like South and East Asia (for example, Mandarin Chinese or Korean), voiced fricatives are much less common.

Sometimes, a language might have a voiced fricative but no voiceless partner for it. This can happen when sounds change over time.

How Fricatives Sound (Acoustics)

When you look at the sound waves of fricatives, they often look like random noise. This is because of the turbulent, messy airflow. If the fricative is voiced (meaning your vocal cords are vibrating), you'll also see a regular pattern mixed in with the noise.

Fricatives made at the front of your mouth (like 's' or 'f') tend to have higher-pitched sounds. Those made further back in your mouth (like the 'ch' in "loch") have lower-pitched sounds. Scientists can even measure the average frequency of a fricative's sound to figure out where in the mouth it was made!

See also

In Spanish: Consonante fricativa para niños

• Apical consonant
• Hush consonant
• Laminal consonant
• List of phonetics topics