Voiceless nasal glottal approximant

The voiceless nasal glottal approximant is a type of consonantal sound, a nasal approximant, used in some oral languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨h̃⟩, that is, an h with a tilde.

Voiceless nasal glottal approximant
h̃

Occurrence

The h sound is nasalized in several languages, apparently due to a connection between glottal and nasal sounds called rhinoglottophilia. Examples of languages where the only h-like sound is nasalized are Krim, Lisu, and Pirahã.

More rarely, a language will contrast oral /h/ and nasal /h̃/. Two such languages are neighboring Bantu languages of Angola and Namibia, Kwangali and Mbukushu. In these languages, vowels following /h̃/ are nasalized, though nasal vowels do not occur elsewhere. A distinction is also reported from Wolaytta, though in that case the nasal is rare. Swazi distinguishes /h, h̃, ɦ, ɦ̃/.

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Basque	Souletin dialect[1]	ahate	[ãˈh̃ãte]	'duck'
Carapana[2]		hʉ̃gẽ́	[h̃ĩŋɛ̃́]	'god'	Allophone of [h] before nasal vowels.
Kaingang[3]		hũg	[h̃ũŋ]	'hawk'	Possible word-initial realization of /h/ before a nasal vowel.[3]
Kwangali[4]		nhonho	[h̃õh̃õ]	Tribulus species
Khoekhoegowab	Damara dialect	hû	[h̃ũː]	'six'	Free variation[clarification needed]
Lisu	Northern dialect[5]	han	[h̃a˧]	'soul'
	Southern dialect[6]	ꓦꓻ	[h̃ɑ˦]
Swazi					Distinguishes /h, h̃, ɦ, ɦ̃/.
Tofa[7]		иъһён	[iʔh̃jon]	'twenty'