A voiceless glottal fricative, sometimes called a voiceless glottal transition or an aspirate, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the "h" sound in "hut". The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .
A sound may have real glottal constriction in a number of languages (such as Arabic), making it a true fricative. However, in many languages that have it, it only patterns like a fricative or approximant phonologically, and lacks the usual phonetic characteristics of a consonant. In such languages, has no inherent place or manner of articulation, as well as lacking the height and backness of a vowel. Thus it has been described as neither consonant nor vowel but simply voiceless phonation:
An effort was undertaken at the Kiel Convention in 1989 to move glottal fricatives, both voiceless and voiced, to the approximant cells of the IPA chart. A specifically fricative sound may be indicated with a raising diacritic , and a specifically approximant with a lowering diacritic .
The Shanghainese language, among others, contrasts voiced and voiceless glottal fricatives.Qian 2003, pp.14-16.
Features Features of the voiceless glottal fricative:
In some languages, it has the constricted manner of articulation of a fricative. However, in many if not most it is a transitional state of the glottis or an approximant, with no manner of articulation other than its phonation type. Because there is no other constriction to produce friction in the vocal tract in the languages they are familiar with, many phoneticians no longer consider to be a fricative. However, the term "fricative" is generally retained for historical reasons. It may have a glottal place of articulation. However, it may have no fricative articulation, in which case the term 'glottal' only refers to the nature of its phonation, and does not describe the location of the stricture nor the turbulence. All consonants except for the glottals, and all vowels, have an individual place of articulation in addition to the state of the glottis. As with all other consonants, surrounding vowels influence the pronunciation , and has sometimes been presented as a voiceless vowel, having the place of articulation of these surrounding vowels.
Occurrence Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Adyghe Shapsug (khyg') 'now' Corresponds to in other dialectsAfar daháb 'gold' Albanian 'the graces' Aleut hanix̂ 'lake' Arabic Modern Standard (haa'il) 'enormous' See Arabic phonology Assyrian Eastern ܗܝܡܢܘܬܐ (hèmanūta) 'faith' Western ܗܪܟܗ (harcë) 'here' Armenian Eastern (hayeren) 'Armenian language' Asturian All dialects guaḥe 'kid' South Central dialects ḥuerza 'force' Initial becomes before -ue and -ui in South Central dialects. May be also realized as Eastern dialects ḥacer "to do" Initial becomes in Eastern dialects. May be also realized as Avar 'oath' Azeri hin 'chicken coop' Basque North-Eastern dialects 'three' Can be voiced instead Bengali (haoua) 'wind' Berber 'shoe' Breton 'today' Blackfoot () 'really!' Allophone of when it occurs beginning of a word Cantabrian muḥer 'woman' Initial becomes [h]. In most dialects, -LJ- and -C'L- too. May be also realized as Catalan 'ha!' Found in loanwords and interjections. See Catalan phonology Chechen () 'this' Chinese Cantonese / 'sea' See Cantonese phonology Taiwanese Mandarin / A velar fricative for Standard Chinese. See Standard Chinese phonology Danish 'house' Often voiced when between vowels. See Danish phonology English high 'high' See English phonology and H-dropping Esperanto 'home' See Esperanto phonology Eastern Lombard Val Camonica 'Brescia' Corresponds to /s/ in other varieties. Estonian 'tooth' See Estonian phonology Faroese 'she' Finnish 'tooth' See Finnish phonology French Belgian 'pannier' Found in the region of Liège. See French phonologyGalician Many dialects 'cat' Found in Western, Central, and some Eastern dialects. Realization of in some dialects. May be also realized as . See gheada Georgian (hava) 'climate' German 'hatred' See Standard German phonology Greek Cypriot (mahazi) 'shop' Allophone of before Hawaiian 'shelf' See Hawaiian phonology Hebrew (har) 'mountain' /h/ and other glottal consonants tend to elide. See Modern Hebrew phonology Hindi Standard ('ham) 'we' See Hindustani phonology Hmong () 'to honor' Hungarian 'right' See Hungarian phonology Irish shroich 'reached' Appears as the lenited form of 'f', 's' and 't', as well as grammatical pre-aspiration of vowels, & occasionally word-initial as 'h' in borrowed words. See Irish phonology Italian Tuscan 'the captains' Intervocalic allophone of . See Italian phonology Japanese / 'bare skin' See Japanese phonology Javanese ꦩꦲ (Maha) 'the expert, almighty one' Kabardian (tkhyl"khė) 'books' Kazakh шаһар (şahar) 'city' Khmer () 'spicy' See Khmer phonology () 'old' Korean () 'waist' See Korean phonology Lakota 'voice' Lao (haa) 'five' Leonese 'boy' Lezgian (hek) 'glue' Luxembourgish 'here' See Luxembourgish phonology Malay 'day' Malayalam സഹകരണം (sahakaranam) 'cooperation' Only occurs in loanwords. See Malayalam phonology Mutsun 'dog' Navajo 'mister' Norwegian 'hat' See Norwegian phonology Pashto (ho) 'yes' Persian (haft) 'seven' See Persian phonology Pirahã 'he' Portuguese Most dialects 'Honda' Allophone of . are marginal sounds to many speakers, particularly out of Brazil. See Portuguese phonology Many Brazilian dialects 'sledgehammer' Minas Gerais (mountain dialect) 'art' Colloquial Brazilian (some dialects) Pará Federal University – The pronunciation of /s/ and its variations across Bragança municipality's Portuguese Rio de Janeiro Federal University – The variation of post-vocallic /S/ in the speech of Petrópolis, Itaperuna and Paraty 'drizzle' Corresponds to either or (depending on dialect) in the syllable coda. Might also be deleted, See Portuguese phonology Quechua Standard hatun 'big' The elderly still maintain the pronunciation of , but the young changed the pronunciation to . See Quechuan phonology Romanian 'bridle' See Romanian phonology Scottish Gaelic 'topsail' Lenited form of /t/, /s/, see Scottish Gaelic phonology Serbo-Croatian Croatian 'hops' Allophone of when it is initial in a consonant cluster. See Serbo-Croatian phonology Spanish Andalusian, Canarian, and Extremaduran Spanish 'fig' Corresponds to Old Spanish , which was developed from Latin but muted in other dialects Many dialects 'bishop' Allophone of at the end of a syllable. See Spanish phonology Some dialects 'pony' Corresponds to in other dialects Swedish 'hat' See Swedish phonology Sylheti (hamukh) 'snail' Tagalog 'quiet' See Tagalog phonology Tamil Indian Tamil பகை (pakai) 'hate' Intervocalic singular /k/ has debuccalized for most except in Brahmin and Sri Lankan Tamil. In total it can be [kʰ x ɡ ɣ ɣʰ h] Tatar (hawa) 'air' See Tatar phonology Telugu పదిహేను (padihēnu) 'fifteen' Rarely native, mostly in loanwords. See Telugu language#Phonology Thai (haa) 'five' Turkish 'carpet' See Turkish phonology Ubykh дуаха 'prayer' See Ubykh phonology Ukrainian 'claws' Sometimes when is devoiced. See Ukrainian phonology Urdu Standard (ham) 'we' See Hindi-Urdu phonology Vietnamese 'understand' See Vietnamese phonology Welsh 'sun' See Welsh orthography West Frisian 'corner' Yi / 'hundred'
Nasal
A nasalized voiceless glottal fricative or approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .
The sound is nasalized in several languages, apparently due to a connection between glottal and nasal sounds called rhinoglottophilia. Examples of languages where the only h-like sound is nasalized are Krim, Lisu, and Pirahã.
More rarely, a language will contrast oral and nasal . Two such languages are neighboring Bantu languages of Angola and Namibia, Kwangali and Mbukushu. In these languages, vowels following are nasalized, though nasal vowels do not occur elsewhere. A distinction is also reported from Wolaytta, though in that case the nasal is rare. Swazi distinguishes .
Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Basque Souletin dialect 'duck' Carapana Allophone of before nasal vowels. Kaingang 'hawk' Possible word-initial realization of before a nasal vowel. Kwangali Tribulus species Khoekhoegowab Damara dialect 'six' Free variation Lisu Northern dialect 'soul' Southern dialect Lizu 'language' Nasalization of glottals always occurs in glottal-initial words. Swazi nhinhiza 'to mumble' Distinguishes .Tofa 'twenty'
See also Voiced glottal fricative Index of phonetics articles
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