VOICED GLOTTAL FRICATIVE

The 'breathy-voiced glottal transition', commonly called a 'voiced glottal fricative', is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which often behaves like a consonant, but sometimes behaves more like a vowel, or is indeterminate in its behavior. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is h.

Contents

Features

Occurrence

See also

Features

Features of the "voiced glottal fricative":

★ Its phonation type is breathy voiced, or ''murmured'', which means the vocal cords are loosely vibrating, with more air escaping than in a modally voiced sound.

★ It is a transitional state of the glottis. It has no manner of articulation other than its phonation type. Because there is no other constriction to produce friction in the vocal tract, most phoneticians no longer consider to be a fricative. True fricatives may have a murmured phonation ''in addition'' to producing friction elsewhere. However, the term "fricative" is generally retained for the historical reasons.

★ It has no place of articulation. The term glottal means it is articulated by the vocal folds, but this is the nature of its phonation rather than a separate articulation. All consonants except for the glottals, and all vowels, have an individual place of articulation in addition to the state of the glottis.

★ It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.

★ Because it is pronounced in the throat, without a component in the mouth, the central/lateral dichotomy does not apply.

★ The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Occurrence

Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Belarusian	'г'ара		'mountain'
Czech	'''h'ora''		'mountain'	See Czech phonology
Dutch	'''h'aat''		'hate'	See Dutch phonology
English	''be'h'ind''		'behind'	Some speakers. See English phonology
Finnish	''ra'h'a''		'money'	See Finnish phonology
Kabardian	сысe'х'эр		'my things'
Slovak	'''h'ora''		'mountain'
Ukrainian	'г'ора		'mountain'	See Ukrainian phonology
Shanghainese Wu	鞋		'shoes'
Zulu	''i'hh'ashi''		'horse'

In Sanskrit, this sound is written "" in Devanāgarī and transcribed as "h" and "H" in IAST.

See also

★ Voiceless glottal fricative, a common allophone in numerous languages

★ List of phonetics topics