The voiceless uvular fricative 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. 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 , the
Greek chi. The sound is represented by (ex with
underdot) in
Americanist phonetic notation
Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American ...
. It is sometimes transcribed with (or , if
rhotic) in broad transcription.
There is also a voiceless uvular fricative trill (a simultaneous and ) in some languages, e.g.
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
and
Wolof as well as in the northern and central varieties of
European Spanish.
It 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
), Surselva, Graubünden, Switzerland
, source1_coordinates=
, source1_elevation =
, source2 = Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein
, source2_location = Paradies Glacier, Graubünden, Switzerland
, source2_coordinates=
, source ...
,
Meuse
The Meuse ( , , , ; wa, Moûze ) or Maas ( , ; li, Maos or ) is a major European river, rising in France and flowing through Belgium and the Netherlands before draining into the North Sea from the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta. It has a ...
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), 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 ] In fact, more languages claimed to have a voiceless uvular fricative may actually have a fricative trill. 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."
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
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
, 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
The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English, e.g. in ''loc ...
.
Features
Features of the voiceless uvular fricative:
Occurrence
See also
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Index of phonetics articles
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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