Postalveolar Fricatives

I’ve always had a difficult time helping people pronounce my wife’s name correctly: Jayanne, an orthographic Americanization of the Brazilian name Jaiane. It’s the first syllable that gives every body trouble.

Apparently, very few people are capable of voicing a postalveolar fricative word-initially. The sound is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.

In order to produce the sound, one must understand the manner of articulation. Because it’s a sibilant fricative, it is produced by pushing air flow through a groove in the tongue at the place of articulation (see below) and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth, causing high-frequency turbulence.

Its place of articulation is palato-alveolar, that is, partially palatalized postalveolar (see point 5 in the figure), meaning it is articulated with the front of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue bunched up, or “domed" at the palate. Most Americans tend to labialize the sound.

The sound is common in French, where it is represented by the letter j but it does occur in English. When falling word-medially or word-finally most have no difficulty reproducing the sound correctly, albeit labially. Consider the letter s in the word “treasure” or the final sound in the word “mirage”. It’s initiating the word with the sound that confounds people.

As for the other two syllables in her name, even I don’t get them right.