Examples of the ʧ sound
check /tʆek/ charge /tʆɑːdʒ/ challenge /ˈtʆæləndʒ/ chat /ʧæt/
The consonant /dʒ/ is a voiced, alveo-palatal, affricate consonant. Press the middle of your tongue between your alveolar ridge and your soft palate. Quickly move your tongue downward while forcefully pushing air out. The air in your mouth should stop before it is released.
The sound /ʃ/ is a voiceless, alveo-palatal, fricative consonant. Lightly press the middle of your tongue between your alveolar ridge and your soft palate. The sides of your tongue should lightly touch your back upper teeth. Breathe out and allow air to flow past your tongue.
The sounds /tʃ/ and /ʃ/ are both voiceless, alveo-palatal consonants. However, /tʃ/ is an affricate while /ʃ/ is a fricative.
In this lesson, you'll learn how to pronounce the OH as in ROSE vowel sound. You hear this sound in words like “home,” “control,” and “appropriate.” You might think this sound is pretty easy and you've already got it just right.
These two are pronounced with exactly the same mouth position but /dʒ/ uses the voice, whereas /tʃ/ is just a sudden puff of air similar to a sneeze.
/ʤ/ is released with a sudden release of air, similar to /tʃ/ but with use of the voice. The phonemic symbol /j/ looks as if it should be pronounced like the first letter of jam, but is in fact the first sound in yellow. The sound /j/ is similar to the vowel sound /i:/, and in fact is often called a “semi-vowel”.
To make the /dʒ/ sound:
Place the tip of your tongue just behind the hard ridge at the front of the top of your mouth. Vibrate your vocal cords, and push air forward out of your mouth. Stop the air completely at first, and then release it.
To make the /tʃ/ sound:
Place the tip of your tongue just behind the hard ridge at the front of the top of your mouth. Push air forward out of your mouth. Stop the air completely at first, and then release it.
Manner of articulation: Both sounds are affricates, produced by first entirely stopping the air flow like a stop consonant, and then the tongue pulls back to create friction (like a fricative consonant), creating turbulence.
Both sounds are made by pushing air between the lower teeth and the roof of the mouth, but dʒ begins with a brief "d" sound, and ʒ does not. The two sounds are similar, but the initial "d" in dʒ makes it a sharper sound.
The /ʃ/ sound is one of the nine fricative consonant sounds in American English. Note for geeks: the /ʃ/ sound is a palatal, voiceless, fricative consonant.
Voiceless postalveolar fricativeVoiced postalveolar fricative/ʒ/ is a voiced consonant. /ʃ/ is an unvoiced consonant.
The biggest difference between these two sounds is that /ɒ/ is a short vowel and /ɔ:/ is a long one. The mouth position is also slightly different, with the mouth in /ɔ:/ being slightly tighter and more rounded.
The sound /ʊ/ is a back, high, lax, rounded vowel. Spelling: “oo” – took, good. “u” – put, bush.
/ʃ/ is produced with a much more rounded mouth than /s/, and is the sound we make when we want people to be quiet. If you use your voice with that mouth position, you get the starting sound in "sheet" and the ending sound in "push".
The International Phonetic Association uses the term voiceless postalveolar fricative only for the sound [ ʃ ], but it also describes the voiceless postalveolar non-sibilant fricative [ɹ̠̊˔], for which there are significant perceptual differences.
The common 'sh sound' /ʃ/ spellings are the the 's-h' and 'c-h' spellings. The words "sure, ocean, issue" and "sugar" are all common non-phonetic words pronounced with the 'sh sound' in English.