Voiceless glottal fricative

The voiceless glottal fricative, sometimes called voiceless glottal transition or the aspirate, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages that patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant phonologically, but often lacks the usual phonetic characteristics of a consonant. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is Template:Angbr IPA. However, has been described as a voiceless phonation because in many languages, it lacks the place and manner of articulation of a prototypical consonant, as well as the height and backness of a prototypical vowel:

[ and ] have been described as voiceless or breathy voiced counterparts of the vowels that follow them [but] the shape of the vocal tract [...] is often simply that of the surrounding sounds. [...] Accordingly, in such cases it is more appropriate to regard and as segments that have only a laryngeal specification, and are unmarked for all other features. There are other languages [such as Hebrew and Arabic] which show a more definite displacement of the formant frequencies for , suggesting it has a [glottal] constriction associated with its production.

An effort undertaken at the Kiel Convention in 1989 attempted to move glottal fricatives, both voiceless and voiced, to approximants.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp The fricative may be represented with the extIPA diacritic for strong articulation, Template:Angbr IPA.

The Shanghainese language, among others, contrasts voiced and voiceless glottal fricatives.

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

Fricative or transition

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Adyghe	Shapsug	/khyg'		'now'	Corresponds to in other dialects.
Afar		daháb	[dʌhʌb]	'gold'
Albanian			Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'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	{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "hɑjɛɾɛn.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'Armenian language'
Asturian	South-central dialects	ḥuerza		'force'	F- becomes [h] before -ue/-ui in south-central dialects. May be also realized as [ħ, ʕ, ɦ, x, χ]
	Eastern dialects	ḥacer	[haˈθeɾ]	"to do"	F- becomes [h] in oriental dialects. May be also realized as [ħ, ʕ, ɦ, x, χ]
	All dialects	guaḥe ḥispiar	[ˈgwahɪ] [hisˈpjaɾ]	"kid" "to steal small quantities of something"	Some words use ḥ in all dialects.
Avar				'oath'
Azeri		hin		'chicken coop'
Basque	North-Eastern dialects			'three'	Can be voiced Template:IPAblink instead.
Bengali		/haoua		'wind'
Berber				'shoe'
Blackfoot		/ Template:Transliteration / Template:Transliteration		'really!' 'Finished'	Allophone of /x/ when it occurs beginning of a word.
Cantabrian		muḥer	[muˈheɾ]	'woman'	F- 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	/	{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "Yue-hoi2.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'sea'	See Cantonese phonology
	Taiwanese Mandarin	/			A velar fricative Template:IPAblink for Standard Chinese. See Standard Chinese phonology
Danish				'house'	Often voiced Template:IPAblink 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 phonology
Galician	Occidental, central, and some oriental dialects	gato	[ˈhätʊ]	'cat'	Realization of [g] 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'	See Modern Hebrew phonology
Hindi	Standard	/ham		'we'	See Hindustani phonology
Hmong		Template:Script /		'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		/ Template:Transliteration / Template:Transliteration		'spicy' 'old'	See Khmer phonology
Korean		/		'waist'	See Korean phonology
Lakota				'voice'
Lao		/haa		'five'
Leonese				'boy'
Lezgian		/hek		'glue'
Luxembourgish				'here'	See Luxembourgish phonology
Malay				'day'
Mutsun				'dog'
Navajo				'mister'
Norwegian				'hat'	See Norwegian phonology
Pashto		/ho		'yes'
Persian		/haft		'seven'	See Persian phonology
Pirahã				'he'
Portuguese	Many Brazilian dialects			'sledgehammer'	Allophone of . are marginal sounds to many speakers, particularly out of Brazil. See Portuguese phonology.
	Most dialects			'Honda'
	Minas Gerais (mountain dialect)			'art'
	Colloquial Brazilian (some dialects)			'drizzle'	Corresponds to either or (depending on dialect) in the syllable coda. Might also be deleted.
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 /h/, which was developed from Latin /f/ 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
Tatar				'air'	See Tatar phonology
Telugu				'Women's quarters'/ 'Harem'	See Visarga
Thai		/haa		'five'
Turkish				'carpet'	See Turkish phonology
Ubykh		дуаха	[dwaha]	'prayer'	See Ubykh phonology
Ukrainian				'claws'	Sometimes when Template:IPAblink 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'

See also

• Voiced glottal fricative
• Voiceless nasal glottal fricative
• Index of phonetics articles

References

• Template:SOWL

External links

• Template:Phoible