Glottal consonant
| Places of articulation |
| Labial |
| Bilabial |
| Labiodental |
| Linguolabial |
| Labial-velar |
| Coronal |
| Interdental |
| Dental |
| Retroflex |
| Alveolar |
| Postalveolar |
| Alveolo-palatal |
| Dorsal |
| Palatal |
| Labial-palatal |
| Velar |
| Uvular |
| Pharyngeal |
| Epiglottal |
| Glottal |
| Apical |
| Laminal |
| This page contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help] |
| [Edit] |
Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them be states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have. That is, they should be in the IPA "other" chart. However, they are kept in the main chart for historical reasons.
Glottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet:
| IPA | Description | Example | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Orthography | IPA | Meaning | ||
| Missing image Xsampa-questionmark.png Image:Xsampa-questionmark.png | voiceless glottal stop | Hawai‘ian | ‘okina | [ʔo.ˈki.na] | ‘okina |
| Missing image Xsampa-hslash.png Image:Xsampa-hslash.png | breathy voiced glottal "fricative" | Czech | Praha | [pra.ɦa] | Prague |
| Missing image Xsampa-h.png Image:Xsampa-h.png | voiceless glottal "fricative" | English | hat | [hæt] | hat |
The "fricatives" are not true fricatives. This is a historical usage. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis without a specific place of articulation. [ɦ] is a breathy-voiced transition, and could be transcribed as [h̤].
Because the glottis is necessarily closed for the glottal stop, it cannot be voiced.
The glottal stop occurs in many languages. Often all vocalic onsets are preceded by a glottal stop, for exemple in German. The Hawaiian language writes the glottal stop as an opening single quote ‘. Some alphabets like the Arabic have a dedicated letter (called "Hamza") for the glottal stop consonant.