Week 6: The /tʃ/-consonant sound in English

The /tʃ/-consonant sound in English
Voicing	voiceless
Place of articulation	palatal
Manner of articulation	affricate

1.  Words containing /tʃ/

cheese	kitchen
each	itch
H /eytʃ/	cheat
hatch	situation

2.  Contrastive words

/tʃ/	/ʤ/	/tʃ/	/ʤ/
cheap	jeep	riches	ridges
choke	joke	lunch	lunge
chew	Jew	match	Madge
choice	Joyce	etch	edge
chin	gin	chain	Jane

3.  Sentences to practice

1	A	Did Jane like the mats in the yard?
	B	Did Jane like the match in the yard?
2	A	I simply want my share, don’t you?
	B	I simply want my chair, don’t you?
3	a	She has a very little chin.
	B	She has a very little gin.
4	A	Sounds like George is choking.
	B	Sounds like George is joking.
5	A	Believe it or not, Dan did the watching.
	B	Believe it or not, Dan did the washing.

Week 6: The Affricate Sounds

The Affricate Sounds

As it happens in Spanish, English has a voiced and voiceless affricate consonant. Other languages may have some other affricate sounds such as Japanese, which has a /ts/-combination, like in the word tsunami.

How are these particular sounds produced? An affricate is a consonant characterized as having both a fricative and stop manner of production. That is, your tongue is in the alveolar ridge, right behind your teeth, and the airstream is released from a stop position to a frication-like release of the air.

There are only two members in this group:

1. the voiced affricate or /dʒ/, and

2. the voiceless affricate or /tʃ/.

Both of these sounds are a set of sister phonemes. And as it can be seen in the chart below, they are pretty much the same ones we have in Spanish.

Sound	Spanish	English
/dʒ/	voiced affricate palatal	voiced affricate palatal
/tʃ/	voiceless affricate palatal	voiceless affricate palatal

Although these sounds look alike in both languages, you may be very surprised to realize that they can be a pronunciation problem for Spanish speakers when they are found in final position.