IPA number 144 Unicode (hex) U+0127 Kirshenbaum H | Entity (decimal) ħ X-SAMPA X\ Braille Example | |
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The voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is an h-bar, ⟨ħ⟩. In the transcription of Arabic, Berber and other scripts, it is often written ⟨Ḥ⟩, ⟨ḥ⟩.
Contents
Typically characterized as a fricative in the upper pharynx, it is often a whispered [h].
Features
Features of the voiceless pharyngeal fricative:
Occurrence
This sound is the most commonly cited realization of the Semitic letter hēth, which occurs in all dialects of Arabic, Classical Syriac, as well as Biblical and Tiberian Hebrew but only a minority of speakers of modern Hebrew. It has also been reconstructed as appearing in Ancient Egyptian, a related Afro-Asiatic language. Modern non-Oriental Hebrew has merged the voiceless pharyngeal fricative with the voiceless velar (or uvular) fricative. However, phonetic studies have shown that the so-called voiceless pharyngeal fricatives of Semitic languages are often neither pharyngeal (but rather epiglottal) nor fricatives (but rather approximants).