A voiced epiglottal or pharyngeal tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages, though it is not known to exist as a phoneme in any language.
There is no dedicated symbol for this sound in the IPA, but it can be transcribed by adding an "extra short" diacritic to the symbol for the stop, , or equivalently to avoid a clash with the ascender.The Unicode® Standard, Version 17.0 – Core Specification (2025), section 7.9.2 Combining Diacritical Marks Extended, and Figure 7-14 Examples of Alternative Code Points for Displaced IPA Diacritics John Esling uses the transcription .
Features
Occurrence Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Dahalo 'mud' Intervocalic allophone of the voiceless epiglottal stop , may be an approximant instead. Ulcha 'ear' Not explicitly described as voiceless or voiced. According to John Esling, it may also exist in Iraqi Arabic, where the consonant ayin is too short to be an epiglottal stop, but has too much of a burst to be a fricative or approximant.
Notes
References