Voiceless uvular fricative

The voiceless uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , the Greek chi. The sound is represented by (ex with underdot), or sometimes by (ex with caron), in Americanist phonetic notation. It is sometimes transcribed with (or , if rhotic) in broad transcription.

Most languages claimed to have a voiceless uvular fricative may actually have a voiceless uvular fricative trill (a simultaneous and ). Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) note that there is "a complication in the case of uvular fricatives in that the shape of the vocal tract may be such that the uvula vibrates."

Although they are not normally differentiated in studies, languages in which they have been (Hebrew, Wolof, as well as the northern and central varieties of European Spanish) have been found to specifically possess the fricative trill. The fricative-trill can be transcribed as (a devoiced and raised uvular trill) in IPA. It is found as either the fortis counterpart of (which itself is voiceless at least in Northern Standard Dutch: ) or the sole dorsal fricative in Northern SD and regional dialects and languages of the Netherlands ( Dutch Low Saxon and West Frisian) spoken above the rivers Rhine, Meuse and Waal (sometimes termed the Rotterdam–Nijmegen Line). A plain fricative that is articulated slightly further front, as either medio-velar or post-palatal is typical of dialects spoken south of the rivers (mainly Brabantian and Limburgish but excluding Ripuarian and the dialect of Bergen op Zoom), including Belgian SD. In those dialects, the voiceless uvular fricative trill is one of the possible realizations of the phoneme .. have also found that frication is much more commonly in the velar region in dialects and language varieties with "hard G", though they do not distinguish between trilled and non-trilled fricatives in their study., cited in See Hard and soft G in Dutch for more details.

The frication in the fricative trill variant sometimes occurs at the middle or the back of the soft palate (termed ''velar'' or ''mediovelar'' and ''post-velar'', respectively), rather than the uvula itself. This is the case in Northern Standard Dutch as well as some varieties of Arabic, Limburgish and Madrid Spanish. It may thus be appropriate to call those variants voiceless (post)velar-uvular fricative trill as the trill component is always uvular (velar trills are not physically possible). The corresponding IPA symbol is (a devoiced, raised and advanced uvular trill, where the "advanced" diacritic applies only to the fricative portion of the sound). Thus, in cases where a dialectal variation between voiceless uvular and velar fricatives is claimed the main difference between the two may be the trilling of the uvula as frication can be velar in both cases - compare Northern Dutch ''acht'' 'eight' (with a postvelar-uvular fricative trill) with Southern Dutch or , which features a non-trilled fricative articulated at the middle or front of the soft palate.

For a voiceless pre-uvular fricative (also called post-velar), see voiceless velar fricative.

Features

Features of the voiceless uvular fricative:

Occurrence

See also

* Index of phonetics articles
* Voiced uvular fricative

Notes

References

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External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Voiceless Uvular Fricative
Fricative consonants
Uvular consonants
Pulmonic consonants
Voiceless oral consonants
Central consonants