Glottal stop
| Glottal stop | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| ʔ | |||
| IPA number | 113 | ||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | ʔ |
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| Unicode (hex) | U+0294 | ||
| X-SAMPA | ? |
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| Kirshenbaum | ? |
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| Braille |  |
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| Sound | |||
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The glottal stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʔ⟩. Using IPA, this sound is known as a glottal plosive.
In English, the glottal stop occurs as an open juncture (for example, between the vowel sounds in uh-oh!, in "grade A" as opposed to "gray day",) and in T-glottalization. For most US English speakers, a glottal stop is used as an allophone of /t/ between a vowel and "m" (as in atmosphere or Batman) or a syllabic "n" (as in button or mountain) except in slow speech. In British English, the glottal stop is most familiar in the Cockney pronunciation of "butter" as "bu'er".
Features of the glottal stop:
Although this segment is not a writtenphoneme in English, it is present phonetically in nearly all dialects of English as an allophone of /t/ in the syllable coda. Speakers of Cockney, Scottish English and several other British dialects also pronounce an intervocalic /t/ between vowels as in city. In Received Pronunciation, a glottal stop is inserted before a tautosyllabic voiceless stop, e.g. sto’p, tha’t, kno’ck, wa’tch, also lea’p, soa’k, hel’p, pin’ch.
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