The voiced postalveolar or palato-alveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages.

The International Phonetic Association uses the term voiced postalveolar fricative only for the sound [ʒ],[1] but it also describes the voiced postalveolar non-sibilant fricative [ɹ̠˔], for which there are significant perceptual differences, as one is a sibilant and one is not.

An alternative symbol used in some older and American linguistic literature is ⟨ž⟩, a z with a caron.

Although present in English, the sound is not represented by a specific letter or digraph, but is formed by yod-coalescence of [z] and [j] in words such as measure.

The sound occurs in many languages and, as in English and French, may have simultaneous lip rounding ([ʒʷ]), although this is rarely indicated in transcription.