It has a variety of realisations, whose precise phonetic characterisation is a matter of debate, but which usually feature distinct labialization.

The tj-sound (which often corresponds to English words with "ch", such as "chicken", "church") remains distinct, varying from more [ʃ]-like (i.e., /ɕ/) in the standard speech to more [tʃ]-like in northern Sweden and Finland.

It has been variously found to be the following: Consider the following comments by Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson: Some dialects of Swedish have a fricative that has been said to have two or even three articulatory constrictions (Abercrombie 1967).

There is good data available on the Swedish sibilant fricatives (Lindblad 1980) allowing us to consider these sounds in detail.

In addition to these anterior gestures, Lindblad notes that the "tongue body is raised and retracted towards the velum to form a fairly narrow constriction.

The second common variant of Swedish ɧ [...] is described by Lindblad as a "dorsovelar voiceless fricative" pronounced with the jaw more open and without the lip protrusion that occurs in the other variety.

Some phoneticians, such as Georg Sachse [de] of the University of Cologne in his lessons on IPA transcription, suggest that ⟨ɕ⟩ is a better symbol for this sound, but this is not established practice, and may need further research.

A sound transcribed with ⟨ɧ⟩ is also reported word-initially and word-medially in the Wutun language, where it is described simply as a "velar glide", which would be [ɰ].