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Glottal consonant


Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis.

Glottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet:

IPA Description Example
Language Orthography IPA Meaning
Image:Xsampa-questionmark.png voiceless glottal stop Hawai‘ian okina [] ‘okina
Image:Xsampa-hslash.png voiced glottal fricative Czech Praha [pra.ɦa] Prague
Image:Xsampa-h.png voiceless glottal fricative English hat [hæt] hat

The glottal stop occurs in many languages. Often, all vocal attacks are preceded by a voiceless glottal stop, for exemple in German. The French language distinguishes between the letter H normally not pronounced – also with "liaison" – and the glottal stop letter H, like in the word "les héros" (don't pronounce "les zéros"). The Hawaiian language writes the glottal stop as an opening single quote . Some languages like the Arabic have a dedicated letter (called "Hamza") for the glottal stop consonant. For more details on this topic, see: Glottal stop.

See also



07-14-2008 23:18:10
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