Voiceless glottal fricative

A voiceless glottal fricative is a special sound used in some spoken languages. If you speak English, you make this sound when you say the “h” in the word “hut.” This sound is written with the symbol ⟨h⟩ in the International Phonetic Alphabet, which helps people write down sounds from any language.

In some languages like Arabic, this “h” sound is made by tightening the voice box in a special way. But in many other languages, it behaves more like a soft sound and doesn’t have strong features of typical consonant sounds. Because of this, some experts say it is neither a true consonant nor a vowel, but just a breathy sound.

In 1989, a group of experts met and decided how to show this sound in charts of speech sounds. They suggested ways to show if the sound is more like a friction sound or a softer, sliding sound. Some languages, like Shanghainese, even have both a soft “h” sound and a softer version of it.

Features

The voiceless glottal fricative is a special sound used in some languages. It is like the "h" sound in the word "hut". This sound is made without any vibration of the voice box, so it is called "voiceless".

Air is pushed out using the muscles between the ribs and in the belly, which is how most sounds are made. This sound does not let air escape through the nose, and it is not made with air moving over the tongue.

Occurrence

Fricative or transition

The voiceless glottal fricative is a special sound used in some languages. English speakers know this sound as the "h" in the word "hut". This sound is represented by the symbol ⟨h⟩ in a special alphabet used by language experts to write down all the sounds people make when they speak.

Nasal

A nasalized voiceless glottal fricative or approximant is a special sound used in some languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for this sound is ⟨h̃⟩.

The /h/ sound can become nasalized in several languages because of a link between glottal and nasal sounds. Examples include Krim, Lisu, and Pirahã. In some cases, a language can have both a regular /h/ sound and a nasalized /h̃/ sound. Two Bantu languages, Kwangali and Mbukushu, are examples of this. In these languages, vowels after /h̃/ sound nasalized. A similar pattern is seen in Wolaytta, though it is less common. Swazi can tell apart /h/, /h̃/, /ɦ/, and /ɦ̃/.