Standard German phonology

The phonology of Standard German is the standard pronunciation or accent of the German language. It deals with current phonology and phonetics as well as with historical developments thereof as well as the geographical variants and the influence of German dialects.
Consonants.
German has 25 phonemes, which is average among other languages. One of its more unique sounds is the unusual affricate .
"Ich-Laut" and "ach-Laut".
" is the voiceless palatal fricative (found in the word 'I'), and is the voiceless velar fricative (as in the interjection 'oh', 'alas'). is the German word for 'sound, phone'. 
In German, these two sounds are allophones occurring in complementary distribution. The allophone occurs after back vowels and (for instance in 'book'), the allophone after front vowels (for instance in 'me/myself') and consonants (for instance in 'fear', 'sometimes'). (This happens most regularly: if the in is pronounced as a consonant, represents ; however if, as often happens, it is vocalized as , resembling the vowel , then may represent , yielding .)