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Voiceless glottal fricative

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IPA – number 146
IPA – text
IPA – image Xsampa-h.png
Entity h
X-SAMPA h
Kirshenbaum h
The voiceless glottal transition, commonly called a "fricative", is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which often behaves like a consonant, but sometimes behaves more like a vowel, or is indeterminate in its behavior. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is h, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is h.

Features

Features of the "voiceless glottal fricative":

In

Most dialects of English have [h] as a phoneme, and it is represented by "h", as in happy. It usually occurs at the beginning of a morpheme. Between vowels, as in ahead, it may be voiced (murmured) rather than voiceless. In some regional dialects of British English, such as Cockney, there is no [h].

In other languages

Non-native speakers of English, whose native languages either lack an /h/ or use the letter "h" for different sounds, may substitute /x/ for /h/ or not pronounce it at all when speaking English.

In Arabic, the [h] phoneme is represented by the letter هـ.

Some dialects of Basque have [h] as a phoneme, and it is represented by "h". In other dialects, [h] has been dropped, and in some spelling systems for these dialects, the "h" is no longer written. This particular dialectical variation was one of the largest difficulties in unifying the dialects of Basque.

The Finnish phoneme /h/ is realized according to the surrounding vowels; next to /e/, /ö/, /ä/ and /o/ or initially, it is the voiceless [h]. Particular to Finnish is that /h/ often appears as a syllable coda, e.g. pehmeä. Sometimes, although [h] is found, the phonation type is breathy voiced until the vocal folds are opened to the maximum, after which it becomes voiceless, e.g. pihti. Even so, this is a voiceless phoneme gaining breathy voicing due the environment, not a breathy-voiced phoneme.

Similarly, some stricture in the vocal tract may be necessary to produce enough turbulence to differentiate a /h/ from its absence, so very weak fricatives near-identical to their surrounding vowels are produced. A slight pharyngeal stricture — nowhere near a real pharyngeal fricative — is used to produce /h/ in paha due to /a/. A palatal fricative is found in vihne due to /i/. Labial frication, where the lips in an identical position to their surrounding vowels, is found in puhu due to the rounded vowel /u/. In pre-modern orthography, the stronger frication was denoted with 'ch' in analogy to German, but modern orthography uses only an 'h', e.g. old huchta vs. modern huhta.

German has [h] as a phoneme, and it is represented by "h", as in Hand (hand).

In Irish, word-initial /h/ is spelled h in loanwords from English, such as hata "hat". Otherwise, word-initial /h/ represents the lenition of /s/ or /t/, in which case it is spelled sh or th respectively. In the middles and ends of words, it is always spelled th.

Kazakh has the phoneme [h]. When written in the Cyrillic alphabet, [h] is reprented with the additional (not found in the Russian alphabet) letter Һ (lower case: һ). When written in the Latin alphabet, [h] is represented by "h". When written in the Arabic alphabet, [h] is represented by ھ.

Romanian has [h] as a phoneme, and it is represented by "h", as in hăţ (bridle).

Romanian is the only widely-spoken contemporary Romance language that retains the phoneme /h/ of Latin (the much less widely-spoken Norman language has also retained it). This is widely believed to be due to Slavonic influence.

Some dialects of Spanish, particularly in the Americas, have [h] as a phoneme, and it is represented by j (and g in front of e and i), as in José (Joseph). As in most Romance languages, the original [h] phoneme was dropped from the original Latin (as can be seen in Spanish words that start with h, e.g. ¡Hasta la vista!). The [h] phoneme in the dialects that have it is the same as the phoneme that is pronounced [x] or [χ] in other kinds of Spanish (see Castilian).

Uzbek has the phoneme [h]. When written in the Cyrillic alphabet, [h] is reprented with the additional (not found in the Russian alphabet) letter Ҳ (lower case: ҳ). When written in the Latin alphabet, [h] is represented by "h".

See also

  Consonants (List, table) See also: IPA, Vowels  
Pulmonics Bilabial Lab'den. Dental Alveolar Postalv. Retroflex Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyn. Epiglottal Glottal   Non-pulmonics and other symbols
Nasals {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA  Clicks  {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA
Plosives {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA  Implo­­sives  {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA
Fricatives {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA  Ejec­­tives  {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA
   Approximants    {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA Other laterals  {{IPA {{IPA
Trills {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA Co-articulated approximants  {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA
Flaps & Taps {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA Co-articulated fricatives  {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA
Lat. Fricatives {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA Affricates  {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA
Lat. Appr'mants {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA Co-articulated stops  {{IPA {{IPA {{IPA
This page contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help]
Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant. Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged impossible.

 


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