The glottal plosive or stop is a type of
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
al sound used in many
spoken language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
s, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the
glottis
The glottis is the opening between the vocal folds (the rima glottidis). The glottis is crucial in producing vowels and voiced consonants.
Etymology
From Ancient Greek ''γλωττίς'' (glōttís), derived from ''γλῶττα'' (glôtta), va ...
. 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 .
As a result of the obstruction of the airflow in the glottis, the glottal vibration either stops or becomes irregular with a low rate and sudden drop in intensity.
Features
Features of the glottal stop:
* It has no
phonation
The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defini ...
, as there is no airflow through the glottis. It is voiceless, however, in the sense that it is produced without vibration of the vocal cords.
Writing
In the traditional
Romanization
Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with the
apostrophe or the symbol
ʾ, which is the source of the IPA character . In many
Polynesian languages
The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family.
There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austro ...
that use the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
, however, the glottal stop is written with a rotated apostrophe, (called ''
‘okina'' in
Hawaiian and
Samoan), which is commonly used to transcribe the Arabic
ayin
''Ayin'' (also ''ayn'' or ''ain''; transliterated ) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac ܥ, and Arabic (where it is sixteenth in abjadi order only).
The letter represen ...
as well (also ) and is the source of the IPA character for the
voiced pharyngeal fricative
The voiced pharyngeal approximant or fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?\. Epiglott ...
. In
Malay
Malay may refer to:
Languages
* Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore
** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century
** Indonesi ...
the glottal stop is represented by the letter (at the end of words), in
Võro
Võro may refer to:
* Võro people, an ethnic group of Estonia
* Võro language
Võro ( vro, võro kiilʼ, link=no , et, võru keel) is a language belonging to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. Traditionally, it has been con ...
and
Maltese by .
Other scripts also have letters used for representing the glottal stop, such as the
Hebrew letter aleph and the
Cyrillic letter
palochka
The palochka or palotchka () ( rus, палочка, p=ˈpaɫətɕkə, r=palochka, literally "a stick") is a letter in the Cyrillic script. The letter usually has only a capital form, which is also used in lowercase text. The capital form of the ...
, used in several
Caucasian languages
The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
Linguistic comparison allows t ...
. The
arabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...
uses
hamza , which can appear both as a
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
and as an independent letter (though not part of the alphabet). Modern Latin alphabets for
various Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus use the letter
heng ('Ꜧ ꜧ'). In
Tundra Nenets, it is represented by the letters
apostrophe and
double apostrophe . In
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
, glottal stops occur at the end of interjections of surprise or anger and are represented by the character .
In the graphic representation of most
Philippine languages
The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw (languages ...
, the glottal stop has no consistent symbolization. In most cases, however, a word that begins with a vowel-letter (e.g.
Tagalog , "dog") is always pronounced with an unrepresented glottal stop before that vowel (as in Modern
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
and
Hausa
Hausa may refer to:
* Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa
* Hausa language, spoken in West Africa
* Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states
* Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse
See also
...
). Some orthographies use a hyphen instead of the reverse apostrophe if the glottal stop occurs in the middle of the word (e.g. Tagalog , "love"; or
Visayan
Visayans ( Visayan: ''mga Bisaya''; ) or Visayan people are a Philippine ethnolinguistic group or metaethnicity native to the Visayas, the southernmost islands of Luzon and a significant portion of Mindanao. When taken as a single ethnic group ...
''gabi-i'', "night"). If it occurs in the end of a word, the last vowel is written with a
circumflex accent
The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
(known as the ''pakupyâ'') if both a stress and a glottal stop occur in the final vowel (e.g. ''basâ'', "wet") or a
grave accent
The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...
(known as the ''paiwà'') if the glottal stop occurs at the final vowel, but the stress occurs at the penultimate syllable (e.g. ''batà'', "child").
Some
Canadian indigenous languages, especially some of the
Salishan languages
The Salishan (also Salish) languages are a family of languages of the Pacific Northwest in North America (the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana). They are characterised by a ...
, have adopted the phonetic symbol ʔ itself as part of their orthographies. In some of them, it occurs as a pair of uppercase and lowercase characters,
Ɂ and ɂ. The numeral 7 or
question mark
The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation mark that indicates an interrogative clause or phrase in many languages.
History
In the fifth century, Syriac Bible manuscripts used ques ...
is sometimes substituted for ʔ and is preferred in some languages such as
Squamish.
SENĆOŦEN
Saanich (also Sənčáθən, written as in Saanich orthography and pronounced ) is the language of the First Nations Saanich people in the Pacific Northwest region of northwestern North America. Saanich is a Coast Salishan language in the North ...
whose alphabet is mostly unique from other Salish languagescontrastly uses the
comma to represent the glottal stop, though it is optional.
In 2015, two women in the
Northwest Territories challenged the territorial government over its refusal to permit them to use the ʔ character in their daughters' names: Sahaiʔa, a
Chipewyan
The Chipewyan ( , also called ''Denésoliné'' or ''Dënesųłı̨né'' or ''Dënë Sųłınë́'', meaning "the original/real people") are a Dene Indigenous Canadian people of the Athabaskan language family, whose ancestors are identified ...
name, and Sakaeʔah, a
Slavey
The Slavey (also Slave and South Slavey) are a First Nations indigenous peoples of the Dene group, indigenous to the Great Slave Lake region, in Canada's Northwest Territories, and extending into northeastern British Columbia and northwestern ...
name (the two names are actually
cognates
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical eff ...
). The territory argued that territorial and federal identity documents were unable to accommodate the character. The women registered the names with hyphens instead of the ʔ, while continuing to challenge the policy.
In the
Crow language
Crow ( native name: ''Apsáalooke'' ) is a Missouri Valley Siouan language spoken primarily by the Crow Nation in present-day southeastern Montana. The word, ''Apsáalooke,'' translates to "children of the raven." It is one of the larger popul ...
, the glottal stop is written as a
question mark
The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation mark that indicates an interrogative clause or phrase in many languages.
History
In the fifth century, Syriac Bible manuscripts used ques ...
: ?. The only instance of the glottal stop in Crow is as a
question marker morpheme, at the end of a sentence.
Use of the glottal stop is a distinct characteristic of the Southern Mainland
Argyll
Argyll (; archaically Argyle, in modern Gaelic, ), sometimes called Argyllshire, is a historic county and registration county of western Scotland.
Argyll is of ancient origin, and corresponds to most of the part of the ancient kingdom of ...
dialects of
Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
. In such a dialect, the standard Gaelic phrase ("I speak Gaelic"), would be rendered .
Occurrence
In English, the glottal stop occurs as an
open juncture (for example, between the vowel sounds in ''uh-oh!'',) and allophonically in
t-glottalization
In English phonology, ''t''-glottalization or ''t''-glottalling is a sound change in certain English dialects and accents, particularly in the United Kingdom, that causes the phoneme to be pronounced as the glottal stop in certain positions ...
. In
British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
, the glottal stop is most familiar in the
Cockney
Cockney is an accent and dialect of English, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by working-class and lower middle-class Londoners. The term "Cockney" has traditionally been used to describe a person from the East End, or ...
pronunciation of "butter" as "bu'er".
Geordie English often uses glottal stops for t, k, and p, and has a unique form of glottalization. Additionally, there is the glottal stop as a
null onset for English; in other words, it is the non-phonemic glottal stop occurring before isolated or initial vowels.
Often a glottal stop happens at the beginning of vowel
phonation
The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defini ...
after a silence.
[
Although this segment is not a ]phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
in English, it occurs phonetically in nearly all dialects of English, as an allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
of in the syllable coda. Speakers of Cockney, Scottish English
Scottish English ( gd, Beurla Albannach) is the set of varieties of the English language spoken in Scotland. The transregional, standardised variety is called Scottish Standard English or Standard Scottish English (SSE). Scottish Standard ...
and several other British dialects also pronounce an intervocalic between vowels as in ''city''. In Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the accent traditionally regarded as the standard and most prestigious form of spoken British English. For over a century, there has been argument over such questions as the definition of RP, whether it is geog ...
, a glottal stop is inserted before a tautosyllabic
Two or more segments are tautosyllabic (with each other) if they occur in the same syllable. For instance, the English word "cat", , is monosyllabic and so its three phonemes , and are tautosyllabic. They can also be described as sharing a 't ...
voiceless stop: stop, that, knock, watch, also leap, soak, help, pinch.
In many languages that do not allow a sequence of vowels, such as Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, the glottal stop may be used epenthetically to prevent such a hiatus
Hiatus may refer to:
*Hiatus (anatomy), a natural fissure in a structure
* Hiatus (stratigraphy), a discontinuity in the age of strata in stratigraphy
*''Hiatus'', a genus of picture-winged flies with sole member species '' Hiatus fulvipes''
* Gl ...
. There are intricate interactions between falling tone and the glottal stop in the histories of such languages as Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
(see stød), Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
and Thai
Thai or THAI may refer to:
* Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia
** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand
** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand
*** Thai script
*** Thai (Unicode block ...
.
In many languages, the unstressed intervocalic allophone of the glottal stop is a creaky-voiced glottal approximant
The creaky-voiced glottal approximant is a consonant sound in some languages. In the IPA, it is transcribed as or . It involves tension in the glottis and diminution of airflow, compared to surrounding vowels, but not full occlusion.
Features
...
. It is known to be contrastive in only one language, Gimi, in which it is the voiced equivalent of the stop.
The table below demonstrates how widely the sound of glottal stop is found among the world's spoken language
A spoken language is a language produced by articulate sounds or (depending on one's definition) manual gestures, as opposed to a written language. An oral language or vocal language is a language produced with the vocal tract in contrast with a si ...
s:
See also
* Saltillo
Saltillo () is the capital and largest city of the northeastern Mexican state of Coahuila and is also the municipal seat of the municipality of the same name. Mexico City, Monterrey, and Saltillo are all connected by a major railroad and highwa ...
* Index of phonetics articles
* Voiced pharyngeal fricative
The voiced pharyngeal approximant or fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?\. Epiglott ...
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
{{IPA navigation
Glottal consonants
Plosives
Pulmonic consonants
Oral consonants