Voiceless epiglottal fricative

A voiceless epiglottal fricative, or voiceless pharyngeal trill,^[1] is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʜ⟩, a small capital version of the Latin letter h. The glyph is homoglyphic with the lowercase Cyrillic letter En (н).

Voiceless epiglottal fricative
ʜ
IPA number	172
Audio sample
source · help
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʜ
Unicode (hex)	U+029C
X-SAMPA	H\
Braille
Image

Although the official name in the IPA for this sound has always been a voiceless epiglottal fricative since it was introduced in 1989, laryngoscopic studies by John Esling have found that both epiglottal and pharyngeal consonants are pharyngeal in place of articulation, and are affected in manner by the aryepiglottic folds and larynx height; he therefore proposed the reclassification of ⟨ʜ⟩ as the trilled counterpart of ⟨ħ⟩, noting both as fricatives,^[2] and later described realizations of ⟨ʜ⟩ ranging from a fricative, to a trill, to a fricative trill.^[3] Esling furthered this reclassification with a modified version of the IPA chart, merging pharyngeal and epiglottal consonants into a single column, placing ⟨ʜ⟩ as a trill and ⟨ħ⟩ as a fricative.^[1]

In Dahalo, ⟨ʜ⟩ is reported to have partial voicing intervocalically, resulting in the consonant appearing as a partially voiced epiglottal approximant, which can be transcribed with the extIPA symbol for partial voicing as ⟨ʜ̬᪽᫛⟩. This is distinguished from a fully voiced epiglottal approximant in having a less dramatic effect on the fundamental frequency (F₀).^[4]

Features

Features of a voiceless epiglottal fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is epiglottal, which means it is articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
• It is an oral consonant, which means that air is not allowed to escape through the nose.
• 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 only with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Agul[5]		мехӏ	[mɛʜ]	'whey'
Amis[6]		tihi	[tiʜiʔ]	'spouse'	The epiglottal consonants in Amis have proven hard to describe, with some describing it not as epiglottal, but a pharyngeal fricative or even as a uvular consonant. See Amis phonology
Arabic[7]	Iraqi[8]	حَي	[ʜaj]	'alive'	Corresponds to /ħ/ ⟨ح⟩ in Standard Arabic. See Arabic phonology
Bengali		খড়	[ʜↄɾ]	'straw'	Mainly realized as such in very eastern regions; often also debuccalized or phonetically realised as /x/. Corresponds to /kʰ/ in western and central dialects. See Bengali phonology
Chechen		хьо	[ʜʷɔ]	'you'
Dahalo			[ʜaːɗo]	'arrow'
Haida		x̱ants	[ʜʌnt͡s]	'shadow'
Somali[9]		xoor	[ʜoːɾ]	'bubble'	Realization of /ħ/ for some speakers.[9] See Somali phonology

See also

• Index of phonetics articles