Uvular consonant
Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the
tongue against or near the
uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than
velar consonants. Uvular consonants are less common than velars. They may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead.
The uvular consonants identified by the
International Phonetic Alphabet are:
Encyclopedia
Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the
tongue against or near the
uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than
velar consonants. Uvular consonants are less common than velars. They may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead.
The uvular consonants identified by the
International Phonetic Alphabet are:
| IPA | Description | Example | Language | Orthography | IPA | Meaning | | uvular nasal | Japanese | ?? Nihon | [] | Japan |
|---|
| voiceless uvular plosive | Kazakh | ????? Qazaq | [] | Kazakh |
|---|
| voiced uvular plosive | Inuktitut | utirama | | because I return |
|---|
| voiceless uvular fricative | Castilian Spanish | hijo | | son |
|---|
| voiced uvular fricative | Lakhota | | [] | bread |
|---|
| uvular trill | French | Paris | [] | Paris |
|---|
| uvular ejective | Cusco Quechua | q'allu | [] | tomato sauce |
|---|
| voiced uvular implosive | Mam | | [] | fire |
|---|
There are no uvular consonants in
English. Uvular consonants are found in many African and Middle-Eastern languages, most notably
Arabic, and in
Native American languages. In parts of the Caucasus mountains and northwestern North America, nearly every language has uvular stops and fricatives. Two uvular Rs are found in north-western Europe, where they spread from northern
French.
The voiceless uvular plosive is transcribed as in both the IPA and SAMPA. It is pronounced somewhat like the voiceless velar plosive , but with the middle of the tongue further back, against the uvula rather than the velum. The most familiar use will doubtless be in the transliteration of Arabic place names such as
Qatar and
Iraq into English, though, since English lacks this sound, this is generally pronounced as the most similar sound that occurs in English, .
, the voiced equivalent of , is much rarer. It is like the
voiced velar plosive , but articulated in the same uvular position as . Few languages use this sound, but it is found in some varieties of
Persian and in several Northeast Caucasian languages, notably Tabasaran.
The voiceless uvular fricative is similar to the voiceless velar fricative , except that it is articulated on the uvula. It is found instead of in some dialects of German and Arabic.
The Tlingit language of the Alaskan Panhandle has ten uvular consonants:
| tenuis plosive | | tree spine |
| aspirated plosive | | basket |
| ejective stop | | screech owl |
| labialized tenuis plosive | | octopus |
| labialized aspirated plosive | | people, tribe |
| labialized ejective stop | | cooking pot |
| voiceless fricative | | fingernail |
| ejective fricative | | freshwater sockeye salmon |
| labialized voiceless fricative | | canvas, denim |
| labialized ejective fricative | | down |
and the
Ubykh language of Turkey has 20.
The Three Uvular Rs
The uvular trill is used in certain dialects of French,
German,
Dutch,
Portuguese,
Swedish and
Norwegian, as well as Hebrew, for the letter <r> respectively the rhotic phoneme. In many of these it has the voiced and/or voiceless uvular fricative as an allophone when it follows one of the voiceless stops , , or at the end of a word, as in
maître ..
As with most trills, uvular trills are often reduced to a single contact, especially between vowels.
Unlike other uvular consonants, the uvular trill is articulated without a retraction of the tongue, and therefore doesn't lower neighboring high vowels the way uvular stops commonly do.
Several other languages, including
Inuktitut, Abkhaz and some varieties of Arabic, have a voiced uvular fricative but do not treat it as an
r.
In Lakhota the uvular trill is an allophone of the voiced uvular fricative before .
See also
