VOICELESS UVULAR FRICATIVE

The 'voiceless uvular fricative' is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is X.
It is not to be confused with a voiceless velar fricative or x.

Contents

Features

Occurrence

References

See also

Features

Features of the voiceless uvular fricative:

★ Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.

★ Its place of articulation is uvular which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) against or near the uvula.

★ Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.

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

★ It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.

★ 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
Abkhaz	'х'па		'three'	Contrasts with labialized and palatalized forms
Afrikaans (some dialects)	'''g'oed''		'good'
Atkan Aleut	''hati'x̂'''		'ten'
Armenian	'խ'նդրեմ		'please'
Avar	ор'х'		'to lift'	Contrasts with a tense form
Chilcotin	?		'I made it'
Eyak	''da.'x̣'''		'and'
French (some dialects)	'''r'oche''		'rock'	Rhotic consonant. See French phonology
German (some dialects)	''Da'ch'''		'roof'	Appears only after certain back vowels. See German phonology
Haida			'fence'
Kabardian	нэ'хъ'		'more'	Contrasts with a labialized form
Kabyle	''a'xx'am''		'house'
Klallam			'salmon backbone'
Lezgi	'х'ат		'bead'	Contrasts with a labialized form
Oowekyala			'the invisible one here with me will be short'
Saanich	''WE'X'ES''		'small frogs, peepers'	Contrasts with a labialized form
Brazilian Portuguese (some dialects)	''ca'rr'o''		'car'	See Portuguese phonology
Seri	'''x'eecoj''		'wolf'	Contrasts with a labialized form
Tlingit	''tla'xh'''		'very'	Tlingit has four different uvular fricatives
Ubykh			'I need to eat it'	Ubykh has ten different uvular fricatives. See Ubykh phonology

References

★ Hess, Wolfgang (2001). "Funktionale Phonetik und Phonologie." In "Grundlagen der Phonetik." Bonn: Institut für Kommunikationsforschung und Phonetik, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität. [1]

See also

★ List of phonetics topics