Places and manners of articulation

Fricatives

The fricative inventory of English is quite rich (nine fricatives), but there are many more possibilities that are found in several languages of the world. The voiceless bilabial fricative, [ɸ], is common in Greek and Hausa, while the voiced counterpart, [ß], is found in Spanish. Ewe of West Africa has both of these bilabial fricatives. Retroflex fricatives, both voiceless, which can be transcribed as [ṣ] (or [ȿ]), and voiced, which can be transcribed as [z] (or [ʐ],) are found in Mandarin Chinese and in several Dravidian languages of India, such as Tamil and Malayalam. Palatal fricatives are also found in several languages. While the voiceless [ç] is found in Irish, Bengali, German, Norwegian, and Greek, the voiced counterpart, [ʝ], is found in Swedish, Greenlandic, and Margi. Velar fricatives can be found in Indo-European languages. We can cite Welsh, Irish, Bulgarian, Czech, German, Sindhi, and Slovene for the voiceless [x], and Greek, Spanish, Arabic, Persian, German, and Irish for the voiced [Ɣ]. The voiceless uvular fricative, [χ], is common in Dutch and Semitic languages (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew), and several Amerindian languages (e.g. Tlingit), while the voiced counterpart, [ʁ], is frequent in Portuguese and French. Finally, pharyngeal fricatives, both voiceless, [ħ], and voiced, [ʕ], are commonly found in Semitic languages.