IPA reference · consonant
ʂ — voiceless retroflex fricative
Friction produced with the tongue tip curled back toward the hard palate.
How to make the voiceless retroflex fricative
Curl the tongue tip up and back so the underside faces forward, then blow. The sound is darker and lower than English "sh".
This sound does not occur in standard English. That means there is no word you can say to find it by accident; you have to build it from the articulatory instruction above and check it against a recording.
Languages that use it
Sounds it gets confused with
Most pronunciation errors are not random — they are a substitution of the nearest sound the speaker already owns. These are the usual substitutions for ʂ, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
The English substitution; it is too far forward.
The other member of the contrast in Polish, Russian and Mandarin.
What this means for learners
In Russian ш is always hard and never palatalises, which is precisely what distinguishes it from щ.
Teaching this sound
Describing a sound in words gets a student roughly half the way there. The other half is hearing it produced correctly, immediately after producing it incorrectly, with both versions available to replay. That is the argument for recording during the lesson rather than after it: the student leaves with your model of ʂ attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol ʂ make?
ʂ is the voiceless retroflex fricative. Friction produced with the tongue tip curled back toward the hard palate. It does not occur in standard English.
How do you pronounce ʂ?
Curl the tongue tip up and back so the underside faces forward, then blow. The sound is darker and lower than English "sh".
Which languages have the voiceless retroflex fricative?
Among the languages covered here: Russian (шум, “noise”); Polish (szkoła, “school”); Chinese (是, “to be”).
What is the difference between ʂ and ʃ?
The English substitution; it is too far forward.