Glottal consonant
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:
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.
Encyclopedia
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 | | voiceless glottal stop | Hawaiian | ‘okina | [] | ‘okina |
|---|
| breathy voiced glottal "fricative" | Czech | Praha | [] | Prague |
|---|
| voiceless glottal "fricative" | English | hat | [] | hat |
|---|
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. The
Hawaiian language writes the glottal stop as an opening single quote
‘. Some alphabets use
diacritics for the glottal stop, such as hamza <
?> in the
Arabic alphabet; in many languages of
Mesoamerica, the Latin letter
is used for glottal stop.
Because the glottis is necessarily closed for the glottal stop, it cannot be voiced.
See also