noun
- consonant sounds that begin as stops and end as fricatives, such as the ‘ch’ in ‘chair’ or the ‘j’ in ‘judge’
Usage: linguistics; phonetics
Examples
- The phonetics professor explained that affricates combine two types of consonant sounds.
- English has two main affricates: the voiceless ‘ch’ and the voiced ‘j’ sounds.
- Students learning pronunciation often struggle with affricates in foreign languages.
- The word ‘church’ contains two affricates, one at the beginning and one at the end.
- Linguists classify affricates as complex consonants rather than simple stops or fricatives.
- Some languages have more affricates than English, making them challenging for English speakers to learn.