Voiceless glottal fricative

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IPA – number 146
IPA – text h
IPA – image {{{imagesize}}}
Entity h
X-SAMPA h
Kirshenbaum h
Sound sample (help·info)


The voiceless glottal transition, commonly called a "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 h, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is h.

Contents

[edit] Features

Features of the "voiceless glottal fricative":

  • Its phonation type is voiceless, which means that the air passes through the vocal cords without causing them to vibrate.
  • 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 [h] to be a fricative. However, the term "fricative" is generally retained for historical reasons.
  • It has no fricative place of articulation. 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 [h], and [h] has sometimes been presented as a voiceless vowel, having the place of articulation of these surrounding vowels.
  • 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.

[edit] In English

Most dialects of English have [h] as a phoneme, and it is represented by "h", as in happy. It usually occurs at the beginning of a morpheme. Between vowels, as in ahead, it may be voiced (murmured) rather than voiceless. In some regional dialects of British English, such as Cockney, there is no [h].

[edit] In other languages

Non-native speakers of English, whose native languages either lack an /h/ or use the letter "h" for different sounds, may substitute /x/ for /h/ or not pronounce it at all when speaking English.

[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 n̪ n ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ Clicks  ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ
Plosives p b p̪ b̪ t̪ d̪ 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  pʼ tʼ kʼ qʼ sʼ
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.
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