Strident vowels (also called sphincteric vowels) are strongly
pharyngealized vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...
s accompanied by an
(ary)epiglottal trill, with the
larynx being raised and the
pharynx
The pharynx (plural: pharynges) is the part of the throat behind the mouth and nasal cavity, and above the oesophagus and trachea (the tubes going down to the stomach and the lungs). It is found in vertebrates and invertebrates, though its ...
constricted.
Either the
epiglottis or the
arytenoid cartilages thus vibrate instead of the
vocal cords
In humans, vocal cords, also known as vocal folds or voice reeds, are folds of throat tissues that are key in creating sounds through vocalization. The size of vocal cords affects the pitch of voice. Open when breathing and vibrating for speech ...
. That is, the epiglottal trill is the voice source for such sounds.
Strident vowels are fairly common in
Khoisan languages, which contrast them with simple pharyngealized vowels. Stridency is used in
onomatopoeia in
Zulu and
Lamba.
Stridency may be a type of
phonation called
harsh voice. A similar phonation, without the trill, is called ''ventricular voice''; both have been called ''pressed voice''.
Bai, of southern
China, has a
register system that has
allophonic strident and pressed vowels.
There is no official symbol for stridency in the
IPA, but a superscript (for a
voiced epiglottal trill) is often used. In some literature, a subscript double tilde (≈) is sometimes used,
as seen here on the letter ():
It has been accepted into
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
, at code point U+1DFD.
Languages
These languages use phonemic strident vowels:
* Tuu languages
**
Taa (See
Taa vowels)
** ǃKwi (ǃUi)
***
Nǁng (a dialect cluster;
moribund)
***
ǀXam (a dialect cluster, including Nǀuusaa) †
See also
*
Nasal vowel
*
Vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...
References
Sources
*
Phonation
{{phonetics-stub
br:Vogalenn skiltr