Voiced pharyngeal fricative
| Voiced pharyngeal fricative | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| ʕ | |||
| ʕ̝ | |||
| IPA number | 145 | ||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | ʕ |
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| Unicode (hex) | U+0295 | ||
| X-SAMPA | ?\ |
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| Kirshenbaum | H<vcd> |
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| Braille |
 
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| Sound | |||
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.svg)
| 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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