Affricate consonant Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
An affricate is a consonant that begins like a stop (most often an alveovelar, such as [t] or [d]) but ends with a fricative or, in one language, a trilled release. The English sounds spelt "ch" and "j" (transcribed [tʃ] and [dʒ] (or [tS] and [dZ] in SAMPA)), German z [ts] and Italian z [dz] are typical affricates. These sounds are fairly common in the world's languages, as are other affricates with similar sounds, such as those in Polish and Chinese.Much less common are labial affricates, such as [pf] in German, and velar affricates, such as [kx] in Setswana (written kg) or Swiss German. Worldwide, only a few languages have affricates in these positions, even though the corresponding stop consonants are virtually universal. Also quite uncommon are alveovelar affricates where the fricative is lateral, such as the [tl] sound found in Nahuatl and Totonac.
An affricate is a single speech segment, not a sequence of two sounds. In fact, in some languages (e.g. Polish) affricate and "stop plus fricative" clusters contrast phonemically, as in czysta 'clean (f.)' [tʃ...] versus trzysta 'three hundred' [t|ʃ...] (the vertical line separates segments). In English the cluster [ts] occurs, as in bats, but it doesn't function as an affricate.