en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Chinese
1 correction found
The palatal and retroflex fricatives 照穿牀審禪
This labels the whole 照穿牀審禪 series as fricatives, but several of those initials are affricates, not fricatives.
Full reasoning
In the traditional 36-initial system, 照、穿、牀 are not fricatives; they are affricate/obstruent initials. Only 審 and 禪 are fricatives. So calling the entire series “fricatives” is inaccurate.
This is a standard point in descriptions of Middle Chinese initials. Scholarly sources describe the relevant coronal series as a mix of affricates and fricatives, and one source explicitly classifies 照, 穿, 床 as stop/affricate initials while 審, 禪 are fricatives.
2 sources
- Phonology of Chinese Dialects (University of Washington / CRL PDF search result snippet)
This set of initials differs from Beijing Mandarin in having no retroflex stop/affricate initials (知, 徹, 澄) but possessing a stop/affricate retroflex sibilant series (照, 穿, 床) and a fricative retroflex sibilant series (審, 禪).
- Guillaume Jacques (CiteSeerX PDF search result snippet)
照 zhào | Retroflex affricates ... 章 zhāng | Alveolo-palatal affricates ... Karlgren thought that 船 was an affricate dź-, whereas 禅 was a fricative.