American English Phonetics

11.4 Affricates

An affricate can be described as a sound that begins as a stop and ends as a fricative; it is a stop whose release is slowed down, such that considerable friction is heard. Two such sequences have phonemic status in GA: /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/. The sequences /tr/ and /dr/ are also discussed here. Note that they are not seen as single phonemes.