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Voiceless uvular–epiglottal plosive

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Voiceless uvular–epiglottal plosive
q͡ʡ
Encoding
Unicode (hex)U+0071 U+0361 U+02A1
X-SAMPAq>\

The voiceless uvular-epiglottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is a [q] and [ʡ] pronounced simultaneously. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨q͡ʡ⟩.

Features

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Features of the voiceless uvular-epiglottal plosive are:

  • Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
  • It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
  • It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
  • Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

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Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Somali qiiq [q͡ʡíìq͡ʡ] 'to emit smoke' Allophone of [q][1]

References

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  1. ^ Edmondson, Jerold A.; Esling, John H.; Harris, Jimmy G. Supraglottal cavity shape, linguistic register, and other phonetic features of Somali (PDF) (Report). p. 5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-03-15. Retrieved 2020-11-21.