The voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a type of
consonantal sound, used in some
spoken languages. The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
that represents this sound is an
h-bar, , and the equivalent
X-SAMPA symbol is
X\. In the transcription of Arabic, Berber and Hebrew as well as a few other scripts, it is often written , .
Typically characterized as a fricative in the upper pharynx, it is often characterized as a
whispered
is a series of light novels written by Shoji Gatoh and illustrated by Shiki Douji. The series follows Sousuke Sagara, a member of the covert anti-terrorist private military organization known as Mithril, tasked with protectin ...
Features
Features of the voiceless pharyngeal fricative:
Occurrence
This sound is the most commonly cited realization of the Semitic letter
hēth
Heth, sometimes written Chet, but more accurately Ḥet, is the eighth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Ḥēt 𐤇 , Hebrew Ḥēth , Aramaic Ḥēth , Syriac Ḥēṯ ܚ, Arabic Ḥā' , and Maltese Ħ, ħ.
Heth original ...
, which occurs in all dialects of
Arabic,
Classical Syriac
The Syriac language (; syc, / '), also known as Syriac Aramaic (''Syrian Aramaic'', ''Syro-Aramaic'') and Classical Syriac ܠܫܢܐ ܥܬܝܩܐ (in its literary and liturgical form), is an Aramaic dialect that emerged during the first century ...
, as well as
Biblical
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
and
Tiberian Hebrew but only a minority of speakers of
Modern Hebrew. It has also been reconstructed as appearing in
Ancient Egyptian, a related
Afro-Asiatic language
The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic ...
. Modern non-
Oriental Hebrew has merged the voiceless pharyngeal fricative with the
voiceless velar (or
uvular) fricative. However, phonetic studies have shown that the so-called voiceless pharyngeal fricatives of
Semitic languages are often neither pharyngeal (but rather
epiglottal) nor fricatives (but rather
approximants).
See also
*
Pharyngeal fricative
A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, ...
*
Heth
*
Index of phonetics articles
A
* Acoustic phonetics
* Active articulator
* Affricate
* Airstream mechanism
* Alexander John Ellis
* Alexander Melville Bell
* Alfred C. Gimson
* Allophone
* Alveolar approximant ()
* Alveolar click ()
* Alveolar consonant
* Alveolar ejecti ...
*
Guttural
*
H with stroke
Ħ (minuscule: ħ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, derived from H with the addition of a bar. It is used in Maltese for a voiceless pharyngeal fricative consonant (corresponding to the letter ''heth'' of Semitic abjads: ar, ح, he, ח). ...
Notes
References
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External links
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{{IPA navigation
Fricative consonants
Pharyngeal consonants
Pulmonic consonants
Voiceless oral consonants
Maltese language