Voiceless uvular affricate

The voiceless uvular affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent this sound are ⟨q͡χ⟩ and ⟨q͜χ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is q_X. The tie bar is sometimes omitted, yielding ⟨qχ⟩ in the IPA and qX in X-SAMPA. This is potentially problematic in case of at least some affricates, because there are languages that contrast certain affricates with stop-fricative sequences. Polish words czysta ('clean (f.)', pronounced with an affricate /t͡ʂ/) and trzysta ('three hundred', pronounced with a sequence /tʂ/) are an example of a minimal pair based on such a contrast.

There is also the voiceless pre-uvular affricate in some languages, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical voiceless uvular affricate, though not as front as the prototypical voiceless velar affricate. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as ⟨q̟͡χ̟⟩ or ⟨q͡χ˖⟩ (both symbols denote an advanced ⟨q͡χ⟩) or ⟨k̠͡x̠⟩ (retracted ⟨k͡x⟩). The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are q_+_X_+ and k_-_x_-, respectively.