A voiceless uvular plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is pronounced like a voiceless velar plosive , except that the tongue makes contact not on the soft palate but on the uvula. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .
Features
Features of a voiceless uvular stop:
Occurrence
Uvular
Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Abaza / 'man' Adyghe / 'rooster' Aleut / 'grass' ArabicModern Standard/'cat'See Arabic phonologyHejazi/'peak'Allophone of . See Hejazi Arabic phonology Gulf / 'tomorrow' Corresponds to in other dialects. Algerian Assyrian / 'for' Often realized as a tense /k/ rather than uvular /q/. Archi / 'human skin' Avá-Canoeiro 'this'Possible realisation of . In the speech of people aged 40 to 80 years, the consonant is in free variation with , and in post-tonic or primarily or secondarily stressed syllables. Bashkir / 'goose' Chechen / 'three' Chukchi[nət͡ʃəmjəqen]'bitter' Crimean Tatar / 'Crimea' Dawsahak 'dry' English Multicultural London cut 'cut' Allophone of before non-high back vowels. Non-local Dublin back 'back' Allophone of after a retracted vowel for some speakers. Eyak 'wolf' German Chemnitz dialect 'rough' In free variation with , , and . Does not occur in the coda. Greenlandic 'he has a house' See Greenlandic phonology Hebrew Biblical / 'voice' See Biblical Hebrew phonology Mizrahi See Mizrahi Hebrew Shar'ab Temani / See Yemenite Hebrew Hmong White Hmong / 'old', 'ancient', 'outdated' or 'archaic' Hungarian 'soot' Possible allophone of before back vowels. See Hungarian phonology Hindustani Hindi / 'lightning' Mostly in Hindi–Urdu loanwords from Arabic, pronounced mainly in Urdu and by educated Hindi speakers, with rural Hindi speakers often pronouncing it as a . See Hindustani phonologyUrdu / Ibaloi'cloud' Inuktitut / 'explore' See Inuit phonology Iraqw 'break' Kabardian / 'Kabardian' Kabyle 'Kabyle language' May be voiced . Kavalan 'elder brother' Kazakh / 'Kazakhstan' An allophone of before back vowels Ket 'begin' Klallam 'iron' Kurdish Sorani / 'School' An allophone of before back vowels Kurmanji 'crustacean' An allophone of before back vowels Kutenai 'nine' Kyrgyz / 'Kyrgyzstan' An allophone of before back vowelsLishan DidanUrmi Dialect/'foot, leg'MalteseArchaic Cottonera Dialect'cat' Malto क़ान/qán 'eye' Corresponds to /x/ in other North Dravidian languages. See Malto language#Phonology. Nez Perce 'I go to scoop him up in the fire' Nivkh / 'three' Ossetian Iron / 'Vladikavkaz' Persian Early New Persian / 'spoon' May be allophonicly voiced to [ɢ] before a voiced stop. See Persian phonology. Dari standard Tajik standard / Some Iranian speakers / 'frog' In Western Iranian dialects, /q/ is realized as /ɢ/, converging with /ɣ/ into a single phoneme. Though some dialects in eastern Iran may still realize the distinction in some words. See Persian phonology. Quechua 'tongue' Sahaptin qu 'heavy' Seediq 'Seediq' Seereer-Siin — — Shor 'shaman' Somali 'shape' See Somali phonology St’át’imcets 'to touch' Tlingit 'tree spine' Tlingit contrasts six different uvular stops Tatar / 'from where?' Tsimshian 'tobacco' Turkmen 'white' Allophone of /k/ next to back vowels Ubykh qhë 'grave' One of ten distinct uvular stop phonemes. See Ubykh phonology Uyghur / 'white' Yup'ik 'fresh water' Yukaghir Northern / 'one' Southern / 'two' !Xóõ 'to smooth'
Pre-uvular
There is also a voiceless post-velar or pre-uvular plosiveInstead of "pre-uvular", it can be called "advanced uvular", "fronted uvular", "post-velar", "retracted velar" or "backed velar". For simplicity, this article uses only the term "pre-uvular". in some languages, which is more fronted compared to the prototypical uvular plosive, though further back than the prototypical velar plosive. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as or (both symbols denote an advanced ) or (a retracted ). Language Word IPA Meaning Notes English Australian caught 'caught' Allophone of before . See Australian English phonology Hopi 'nose' Uzbek 'arm' Sometimes realized as an affricate . Western Neo-Aramaic Bakh'a Pre-uvular, though in Ma'loula it is slightly more front (post-velar). Ma'loula
See also Guttural Index of phonetics articles Qoph Voiced uvular stop
Notes
References
External links