Voiceless glottal fricative

Uncommon card · No. 160499

A voiceless glottal fricative, sometimes called a voiceless glottal transition or an aspirate, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the "h" sound in "hut". The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨h⟩. A [h] sound may have real glottal constriction in a number of languages (such as Arabic), making it a true fricative. However, in many languages that have it, it only patterns like a fricative or approximant phonologically, and lacks the usual phonetic characteristics of a consonant. In such languages, [h] has no inherent place or manner of articulation, as well as lacking the height and backness of a vowel. Thus it has been described as neither consonant nor vowel but simply voiceless phonation: [h and ɦ] have been described as voiceless or breathy voiced counterparts of the vowels that follow them [but] the shape of the vocal tract [...] is often simply that of the surrounding sounds. [...] Accordingly...

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