Voiceless palatal affricate

A voiceless palatal affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent this sound are ⟨c͡ç⟩ and ⟨c͜ç⟩. The tie bar may be omitted, yielding ⟨cç⟩. This affricate also has an affricate ligature ⟨⟩, approved for inclusion in Unicode 18.

This sound is the non-sibilant equivalent of the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate.

A voiceless palatal affricate occurs in such languages as Hungarian and Skolt Sami, among others. The consonant is quite rare; it is mostly absent from Europe (with the Uralic languages and Albanian being exceptions). It usually occurs with its voiced counterpart, the voiced palatal affricate.