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Epiglottal approximant

Voiced pharyngeal fricative
ʕ
ʕ̝
IPA number 145
Encoding
Entity (decimal) ʕ
Unicode (hex) U+0295
X-SAMPA ?\
Kirshenbaum H<vcd>
Braille ⠖ (braille pattern dots-235) ⠆ (braille pattern dots-23)
Sound
Voiced pharyngeal approximant
ʕ̞
ɑ̯

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 [ʕ], and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?\. Epiglottals and epiglotto-pharyngeals are often mistakenly taken to be pharyngeal.

Although traditionally placed in the fricative row of the IPA chart, [ʕ] is usually an approximant. The IPA symbol itself is ambiguous, but no language is known to make a phonemic distinction between fricatives and approximants at this place of articulation. The approximant is sometimes specified as [ʕ̞] or as [ɑ̯].

Features of the voiced pharyngeal approximant fricative:

Pharyngeal consonants are not widespread. Sometimes, a pharyngeal approximant develops from a uvular approximant. Many languages that have been described as having pharyngeal fricatives or approximants turn out on closer inspection to have epiglottal consonants instead. For example, the candidate /ʕ/ sound in Arabic and standard Hebrew (not modern Hebrew – Israelis generally pronounce this as a glottal stop) has been variously described as a voiced epiglottal fricative, an epiglottal approximant, or a pharyngealized glottal stop.


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