noun
- consonant sounds that begin as stops and end as fricatives, such as the sounds represented by ‘ch’ and ‘j’
Usage: linguistics; phonetics
Examples
- The English language contains two main affricatives: the voiceless ‘ch’ sound and the voiced ‘j’ sound.
- Students learning phonetics must distinguish between affricatives and other consonant types.
- The word ‘church’ begins and ends with affricatives.
- Affricatives combine features of both stop consonants and fricatives.
- Many languages have different sets of affricatives than English does.
- The pronunciation of affricatives can vary between dialects.