Voiced epiglottal trill

The voiced epiglottal or pharyngeal trill, or voiced epiglottal fricative,^[1] is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʢ⟩.

Voiced pharyngeal trill (voiced epiglottal fricative)
ʢ
IPA number	174
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʢ
Unicode (hex)	U+02A2
X-SAMPA	<\
Braille
Image

Few languages distinguish between pharyngeal and epiglottal fricatives/trills, and in fact the fricatives in Arabic are routinely described as "pharyngeal". However, according to Peter Ladefoged, the Aghul spoken in the village of Burkikhan, Dagestan has both (as well as an epiglottal stop), as presented in these audio files.

Features

Features of the voiced epiglottal trill/fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is trill, which means it is produced by directing air over an articulator so that it vibrates.
• Its place of articulation is epiglottal, which means it is articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis.
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Aghul	Richa dialect[2]		[ʢakʷ]	'light'
Arabic[3]	Iraqi[4]	عَاف	[ʢaːf]	'he left'	Corresponds to /ʕ/ (ﻉ) in Standard Arabic and other varieties. See Arabic phonology
Siwa[5]			[arˤbˤəʢa]	'four'

See also

• Index of phonetics articles