The voiceless uvular plosive or stop is a type of
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...
al sound, used in some
spoken language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
s. It is pronounced like a
voiceless velar plosive , except that the tongue makes contact not on the
soft palate
The soft palate (also known as the velum, palatal velum, or muscular palate) is, in mammals, the soft tissue constituting the back of the roof of the mouth. The soft palate is part of the palate of the mouth; the other part is the hard palat ...
but on the
uvula
The palatine uvula, usually referred to as simply the uvula, is a conic projection from the back edge of the middle of the soft palate, composed of connective tissue containing a number of racemose glands, and some muscular fibers. It also conta ...
. The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
that represents this sound is , and the equivalent
X-SAMPA symbol is
q
.
There is also the voiceless pre-uvular plosive
[Instead of "pre-uvular", it can be called "advanced uvular", "fronted uvular", "post-velar", "retracted velar" or "backed velar". For simplicity, this article uses only the term "pre-uvular".] in some languages, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical uvular consonant, though not as front as the prototypical velar consonant. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as or (both symbols denote an
advanced ) or (
retracted ). The equivalent X-SAMPA symbols are
q_+
and
k_-
, respectively.
Features
Features of the voiceless uvular stop:
Occurrence
See also
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Guttural
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Index of phonetics articles
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Qoph
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Voiced uvular stop
Notes
References
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Voiceless Uvular stop
Uvular consonants
Pulmonic consonants
Voiceless oral consonants
Central consonants
Voiceless stops