X (IPA)
| Voiceless velar fricative | |
|---|---|
| x | |
| IPA number | 140 |
| Encoding | |
| Entity (decimal) | x |
| Unicode (hex) | U+0078 |
| X-SAMPA | x |
| Kirshenbaum | x |
| Braille |  |
| Sound | |
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The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English loch.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨x⟩, the Latin and English letter x. It is also used in broad transcription instead of the symbol ⟨χ⟩, the Greek chi, (or, more properly, ⟨ꭓ⟩, the Latin chi) for the voiceless uvular fricative.
There is also a voiceless post-velar fricative (also called pre-uvular) in some languages. For voiceless pre-velar fricative (also called post-palatal), see voiceless palatal fricative.
Features of the voiceless velar fricative:
The voiceless velar fricative and its labialized variety are traditionally postulated to have occurred in Proto-Germanic, the ancestor of the Germanic languages, as the reflex of the Proto-Indo-European voiceless palatal and velar stops and the labialized voiceless velar stop. Thus Proto-Indo-European *ḱr̥nom "horn" and *kʷód "what" became Proto-Germanic *hurnan and *hwat, where *h and *hw were likely to be [x] and [xʷ]. This sound change is part of Grimm's law.
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