Glottal consonant

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Places of articulation
Labial
Bilabial
Labial-velar
Labial-alveolar
Labiodental
Coronal
Linguolabial
Interdental
Dental
Alveolar
Apical
Laminal
Postalveolar
Alveolo-palatal
Retroflex
Dorsal
Palatal
Labial-palatal
Velar
Uvular
Uvular-epiglottal
Radical
Pharyngeal
Epiglotto-pharyngeal
Epiglottal
Glottal
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Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be consonants at all. However, the glottal stop at least behaves as a typical consonant in languages such as Tsou.

Glottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet:

IPA Description Example
Language Orthography IPA Meaning
Image:Xsampa-questionmark.png voiceless glottal stop Hawaiian okina [ʔo.ˈki.na] ‘okina
Image:Xsampa-hslash.png breathy voiced glottal "fricative" Czech Praha [pra.ɦa] Prague
Image:Xsampa-h.png voiceless glottal "fricative" English hat [hæt] hat

The "fricatives" are not true fricatives. This is a historical usage of the word. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis (phonation) without a specific place of articulation. [h] is a voiceless transition. [ɦ] is a breathy-voiced transition, and could be transcribed as [h̤].

The glottal stop occurs in many languages. Often all vocalic onsets are preceded by a glottal stop, for example in German. The Hawaiian language writes the glottal stop as an opening single quote . Some alphabets use diacritics for the glottal stop, such as hamza <ء> in the Arabic alphabet; in many languages of Mesoamerica, the Latin letter <h> is used for glottal stop.

Because the glottis is necessarily closed for the glottal stop, it cannot be voiced.

[edit] See also

  Consonants (List, table) See also: IPA, Vowels  
Pulmonics Bilabial Lab'den. Dental Alveolar Postalv. Retroflex Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyn. Epiglottal Glottal Non-pulmonics and other symbols
Nasals m ɱ n ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ Clicks  ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ
Plosives p b t d ʈ ɖ c ɟ k ɡ q ɢ ʡ ʔ Implo­­sives  ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ
Fricatives  ɸ β f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ ʂ ʐ ç ʝ x ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ h ɦ Ejec­­tives 
Approximants  β̞ ʋ ð̞ ɹ ɻ j ɰ Other laterals  ɺ ɫ
Trills ʙ r ʀ Co-articulated approximants ʍ w ɥ
Flaps & Taps ѵ̟ ѵ ɾ ɽ Co-articulated fricatives ɕ ʑ ɧ
Lat. Fricatives ɬ ɮ Affricates  ʦ ʣ ʧ ʤ
Lat. Appr'mants l ɭ ʎ ʟ Co-articulated stops  k͡p ɡ͡b ŋ͡m
This page contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help]
Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant. Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged impossible.