Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the glottal fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have, while some do not consider them to be consonants at all. However, glottal consonants behave as typical consonants in many languages. For example, in Literary Arabic, most words are formed from a root C-C-C consisting of three consonants, which are inserted into templates such as pronounced as //CaːCiC// or pronounced as //maCCuːC//. The glottal consonants pronounced as //h// and pronounced as //ʔ// can occupy any of the three root consonant slots, just like "normal" consonants such as pronounced as //k// or pronounced as //n//.
The glottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet are as follows:
| IPA | Description | Example | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Orthography | IPA | Meaning | |||
| pronounced as /ʔ/ | glottal stop | Hawaiian | Hawaiian: '''‘'''okina | pronounced as /[ʔo.ˈki.na]/ | ʻOkina | |
| pronounced as /ɦ/ | breathy-voiced glottal fricative | Czech | Czech: Pra'''h'''a | pronounced as /[ˈpra.ɦa]/ | Prague | |
| pronounced as /h/ | voiceless glottal fricative | English | hat | pronounced as /[ˈhæt]/ | hat | |
| pronounced as /ʔ͡h/ | voiceless glottal affricate | Yuxi dialect | [[Chinese characters|可]] | pronounced as /[ʔ͡ho˥˧]/ | 'can, may' | |
| pronounced as /ʔ̞/ | voiced glottal approximant | Gimi | ogo | pronounced as /[oʔ̞o]/ | 'a grub' | |
In many languages, the "fricatives" are not true fricatives. This is a historical usage of the word. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis (phonation) without a specific place of articulation, and may behave as approximants. pronounced as /[h]/ is a voiceless transition. pronounced as /[ɦ]/ is a breathy-voiced transition, and could be transcribed as pronounced as /[h̤]/. Lamé is one of very few languages that contrasts voiceless and voiced glottal fricatives.
in the Arabic alphabet; in many languages of Mesoamerica, the Latin letter is used for glottal stop, in Maltese, the letter is used, and in many indigenous languages of the Caucasus, the letter commonly referred to as heng is used.Because the glottis is necessarily closed for the glottal stop, it cannot be voiced. So-called voiced glottal stops are not full stops, but rather creaky voiced glottal approximants that may be transcribed pronounced as /[ʔ̞]/. They occur as the intervocalic allophone of glottal stop in many languages. Gimi contrasts pronounced as //ʔ// and pronounced as //ʔ̞//, corresponding to pronounced as //k// and pronounced as //ɡ// in related languages.
pronounced as /navigation/