Voiceless postalveolar affricate

A voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant affricate or voiceless domed postalveolar sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the "ch" sound in "chip".

This sound is transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with ⟨tʃ⟩, ⟨t͡ʃ⟩, ⟨t͜ʃ⟩, or, in broad transcription, ⟨c⟩. There is also a ligature ⟨ʧ⟩, which was retired by the International Phonetic Association but is still used. An alternative commonly used in Americanist tradition is ⟨č⟩.

Historically, [tʃ] often derives from a former voiceless velar stop /k/ (as in English church; also in Gulf Arabic, Slavic languages, Indo-Iranian languages and Romance languages), or a voiceless dental stop /t/ by way of palatalization, especially next to a front vowel (as in English nature; also in Amharic, Portuguese, some accents of Egyptian, etc.).