Affricates

Here we have information about affricates. We will define what a affricate is, show you some examples of words that contain a affricate, and even provide audio recordings so that you can listen to these examples, solidifying your overall understanding of affricates.

Affricates are just a combination of a stop and a fricative. Our two English affricates begin with the stop, followed by the fricative. In other words, the airflow is initially fully blocked with the stop, but the sound finishes with a partial closure in the mouth that causes the sound of a fricative.

Two sounds that are classified as affricates include tʃ and dʒ, which are both notated on the IPA chart of American English consonants.

A couple of examples of words that contain these sounds are “Cheap” and “Jolly.” Below you can see their IPA transcriptions with the affricate indicated by a color.

We have also recorded these words for your convenience. For each example, you will first hear the pronunciation of the affricate, followed by the word.

Cheap = [tʃip]

Jolly = [dʒali]

More Information

American English IPA Consonants
Go here to view all of the American English IPA consonants in their sound classification chart.

Nasals
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