Glottal consonant

Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis Glottis

The space between the vocal cords [i] is called 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 International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet is a system of phonetic notation [i] devised ... 

: The "fricatives" are not true fricatives. This is a historical usage of the word. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis without a specific place of articulation.

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Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis Glottis

The space between the vocal cords [i] is called 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 International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet is a system of phonetic notation [i] devised ... 

:

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
	voiceless glottal stop	Hawaiian Hawaiian language The Hawaiian language takes its name from that of the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archi...	‘okina	[]	‘okina
	breathy voiced glottal "fricative"	Czech Czech language Czech is one of the West Slavic languages [i], along with Slovak [i], Polish [i] ...	Praha	[]	Prague Prague Prague is the capital [i] and largest city of the Czech Republic [i]. ...
	voiceless glottal "fricative"	English English language English is a widely distributed language that originated in England [i] but is now the primary language ...	hat	[]	hat Hat A hat is an item of clothing [i] which is worn on the head [i] a kind of headgear [i]. ...

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

The glottal stop occurs in many languages. Often all vocalic onsets are preceded by a glottal stop, for example in German German language

German is a West Germanic language [i]. ... 

. The Hawaiian language Hawaiian language

The Hawaiian language takes its name from that of the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archi... 

 writes the glottal stop as an opening single quote ‘. Some alphabets use diacritics Diacritics

diacritics is an academic journal [i] founded in 1971 [i] at Cornell University [i]. ... 

 for the glottal stop, such as hamza <?> in the Arabic alphabet Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is the script [i] used for writing Arabic [i] and var... 

; in many languages of Mesoamerica Mesoamerica

The term Mesoamrica is used to refer to a geographical region that extends roughly from the Tropic of Cancer [i] ... 

, the Latin letter is used for glottal stop.

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

See also

• Glottalic consonant
• Place of articulation Place of articulation
  
  In articulatory phonetics [i], the place of articulation of a consonant [i] is the point of contact, wh ... 
  
  
• List of phonetics topics
  

Categories:

• Consonants