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⟩.
In English, the glottal stop is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh!. For most United States English speakers, a glottal stop is used as an allophone of /t/ between a vowel and a syllabic "n", as in button or mountain, except when talking slowly. In British English, the glottal stop is most familiar in the Cockney pronunciation of "butter" as "bu'er".
Contents
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Features 1
-
Phonology and symbolization of the glottal stop in selected languages 2
-
Glottal stop in world languages 3
-
See also 4
-
References 5
-
Bibliography 6
Features
Features of the glottal stop:
-
Its manner of articulation is occlusive, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. Since the consonant is also oral, with no nasal outlet, the airflow is blocked entirely, and the consonant is a stop.
-
Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibration of the vocal cords; necessarily so, because the vocal cords are held tightly together, preventing vibration.
-
It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
-
Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the central–lateral dichotomy does not apply.
-
The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.
Phonology and symbolization of the glottal stop in selected languages
Although this segment is not a written[1] phoneme 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.[2]
In many languages that don't allow a sequence of vowels, such as Persian, the glottal stop may be used to break up such a hiatus. There are intricate interactions between falling tone and the glottal stop in the histories of such languages as Danish (cf. stød), Chinese and Thai.
In many languages, the unstressed intervocalic allophone of the glottal stop is a creaky-voiced glottal approximant. These are only known to be contrastive in one language, Gimi, where it is the voiced equivalent of the stop.
Writing
In the traditional
Romanization of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with an apostrophe,
⟨’⟩, and this is the source of the IPA character
⟨ʔ⟩. In many Polynesian languages that use the Latin alphabet, however, the glottal stop is written with a reversed apostrophe,
⟨‘⟩ (called
‘okina in
Hawaiian and
Samoan), which, confusingly, is also used to transcribe the Arabic
ayin and is the source of the IPA character for the
voiced pharyngeal fricative ⟨ʕ⟩. In
Malay the glottal stop is represented by the letter
⟨k
⟩, in
Võro and
Maltese by
⟨q
⟩.
Other scripts also have letters used for representing the glottal stop, such as the Hebrew letter aleph ⟨א⟩, and the Cyrillic letter palochka ⟨Ӏ⟩ used in several Caucasian languages. In Tundra Nenets it is represented by the letters apostrophe ⟨ʼ⟩ and double apostrophe ⟨ˮ⟩. In Japanese, glottal stops occur at the end of interjections of surprise or anger, and are represented by the character ⟨っ⟩.
In the graphic representation of most Philippine languages, the glottal stop has no consistent symbolization. In most cases, however, a word that begins with a vowel-letter (e.g. Tagalog aso, "dog") is always pronounced with an unrepresented glottal stop before that vowel (as also in Modern German and Hausa). Some orthographies employ a hyphen, instead of the reverse apostrophe, if the glottal stop occurs in the middle of the word (e.g. Tagalog pag-ibig, "love"; or Visayan gabi-i, "night"). When it occurs in the end of a Tagalog word, the last vowel is written with a circumflex accent (known as the pakupyâ), if both a stress and a glottal stop occurs at the final vowel (e.g. basâ, "wet"); or a grave accent (known as the paiwà), if the glottal stop occurs at the final vowel, but the stress occurs at the penultimate syllable (e.g. batà, "child").[3][4][5]
Some Canadian indigenous languages have adopted the phonetic symbol "ʔ" itself as part of their orthographies. In some of them, it occurs as a pair of uppercase and lowercase characters, Ɂ and ɂ.[6] Sometimes the number symbol 7 is used if the ʔ character is not available to the typesetter, and in some cases such as in the Squamish language, the 7 has become the preferred symbol.
In 2015, two women in the Northwest Territories challenged the territorial government over its refusal to permit them to use the ʔ character in their daughters' names: Sahaiʔa, a Chipewyan name, and Sakaeʔah, a Slavey name (the two names are actually cognates). The territory argued that territorial and federal identity documents were unable to accommodate the character. The women registered the names with hyphens instead of the ʔ, while continuing to challenge the policy.[7]
Use of the glottal stop is a distinct characteristic of the Southern Mainland Argyll dialects of Scottish Gaelic. In a such a dialect, the standard Gaelic phrase Tha Gàidhlig agam (I have Gaelic), would be rendered Tha Gàidhlig a'am.
Glottal stop in world languages
This table demonstrates how widely the sound of glottal stop is found among the world's
spoken languages. It is not intended to be a complete list. Any of the languages which appear may have
varieties which are not represented in the table.
Language
|
Word
|
IPA
|
Meaning
|
Notes
|
Abkhaz
|
аи
|
[ʔaj]
|
'no'
|
See Abkhaz phonology.
|
Adyghe
|
Iэ
|
[ʔa]
|
'arm/hand'
|
|
Arabic
|
Standard[8]
|
أغاني
|
[ʔaˈɣaːniː]
|
'songs'
|
See Arabic phonology, Hamza.
|
Metropolitan[9]
|
شقة
|
[ˈʃæʔʔæ]
|
'apartment'
|
Metropolitan dialects including Egyptian Arabic.[9] Corresponds to /q/ in Literary Arabic.
|
Assyrian Neo-Aramaic
|
ܣܥܬ
|
[sʔɐt]
|
'clock' or 'watch'
|
|
Bikol
|
ba-go
|
[ˈbaːʔɡo]
|
'new'
|
|
Burmese
|
မြစ်များ
|
[mjiʔ mjà]
|
'rivers'
|
|
Cebuano
|
tubò
|
[ˈtuboʔ]
|
'to grow'
|
|
Chamorro
|
halu'u
|
[həluʔu]
|
'shark'
|
|
Chechen
|
кхоъ / qo'
|
[qoʔ]
|
'three'
|
|
Chinese
|
Cantonese
|
愛/oi3
|
[ʔɔːi˧]
|
'love'
|
See Cantonese phonology.
|
Wu
|
一级了
|
[ʔiɪʔ.tɕiɪʔ.ʔləʔ]
|
'superb'
|
|
Czech
|
používat
|
[poʔuʒiːvat]
|
'to use'
|
See Czech phonology.
|
Danish
|
hånd
|
[ˈhɒ̜̽nʔ]
|
'hand'
|
One of the possible realizations of stød. Depending on the dialect and style of speech, it can be instead realized as laryngealisation of the preceding sound. See Danish phonology.
|
Dutch[10]
|
beamen
|
[bəʔˈaːmə(n)]
|
'to confirm'
|
See Dutch phonology.
|
English
|
Received Pronunciation
|
uh-oh
|
[ˈɐʔəʊ]
|
'uh-oh'
|
|
American
|
[ˈʌʔoʊ]
|
Australian
|
cat
|
[kʰæʔ(t)]
|
'cat'
|
Allophone of /t/. See glottalization and English phonology.
|
GA
|
Estuary
|
[kʰæʔ]
|
Cockney[11]
|
[kʰɛ̝ʔ]
|
RP[12] and GA
|
button
|
|
'button'
|
Esperanto
|
scii
|
[ˈst͡si.ʔi]
|
'to know'
|
See Esperanto phonology.
|
Finnish
|
linja-auto
|
[ˈlinjɑʔˌɑuto]
|
'bus'
|
See Finnish phonology.
|
German
|
Northern
|
Beamter
|
[bəˈʔamtɐ]
|
'civil servant'
|
See German phonology.
|
Guaraní
|
avañe’ẽ
|
[ãʋ̃ãɲẽˈʔẽ]
|
'Guaraní'
|
Occurs only between vowels.
|
Hawaiian[13]
|
ʻeleʻele
|
[ˈʔɛlɛˈʔɛlɛ]
|
'black'
|
See Hawaiian phonology.
|
Hebrew
|
מאמר
|
[maʔămaʁ]
|
'article'
|
See Modern Hebrew phonology.
|
Icelandic
|
en
|
[ʔɛn]
|
'but'
|
Only used according to emphasis, never occurring in minimal pairs.
|
Iloko
|
nalab-ay
|
[nalabˈʔaj]
|
'bland tasting'
|
Hyphen when occurring within the word.
|
Indonesian
|
bakso
|
[ˌbäʔˈso]
|
'meatball'
|
Allophone of /k/ or /ɡ/ in the syllable coda.
|
Japanese
|
Kagoshima
|
柿
|
[kaʔ]
|
'persimmon'
|
|
Javanese[14]
|
anak
|
[änäʔ]
|
'child'
|
Allophone of /k/ in morpheme-final position.
|
Kabardian
|
Iэ
|
[ʔa]
|
'arm/hand'
|
|
Kagayanen[15]
|
?
|
[saˈʔaɡ]
|
'floor'
|
|
Korean
|
일
|
[ʔil]
|
'one'
|
In free variation with no glottal stop. Occurs only in initial position of word.
|
Malay
|
tidak
|
[ˈtidäʔ]
|
'no'
|
Allophone of final /k/ in the syllable coda, pronounced before consonants or at end of word.
|
Maltese
|
qattus
|
[ˈʔattus]
|
'cat'
|
|
Māori
|
Cook Island
|
taʻi
|
[taʔi]
|
'one'
|
|
Nahuatl
|
tahtli
|
[taʔtɬi]
|
'father'
|
Often left unwritten.
|
Nez Perce
|
yáakaʔ
|
[ˈjaːkaʔ]
|
'black bear'
|
|
Nheengatu[16]
|
ai
|
[aˈʔi]
|
'sloth'
|
Transcription (or absence thereof) varies.
|
Okinawan
|
音
|
[ʔutu]
|
'sound'
|
|
Persian
|
معنی
|
[maʔni]
|
'meaning'
|
See Persian phonology.
|
Pirahã
|
baíxi
|
[ˈmàí̯ʔì]
|
'parent'
|
|
Portuguese[17]
|
Vernacular Brazilian
|
ê-ê[18]
|
[ˌʔe̞ˈʔeː]
|
ironic 'yeah, right!'[19]
|
Marginal sound. Does not occur after or before a consonant. In Brazilian casual speech, there is at least one [ʔ]–vowel length–pitch accent minimal pair (triply unusual, the ideophones short ih vs. long ih). See Portuguese phonology.
|
Some speakers
|
à aula
|
[ˈa ˈʔawlɐ]
|
'to the class'
|
Rotuman[20]
|
ʻusu
|
[ʔusu]
|
'to box'
|
|
Samoan
|
maʻi
|
[maʔi]
|
'sickness, illness'
|
|
Sardinian
|
Some dialects of Barbagia
|
luna
|
[luʔa]
|
'moon'
|
Intervocalic allophone of /n, k, l/.
|
Some dialects of Sarrabus
|
Serbo-Croatian[21]
|
и онда / i onda
|
[iː ʔô̞n̪d̪a̠]
|
'and then'
|
Optionally inserted between vowels across word boundaries.[21] See Serbo-Croatian phonology
|
Seri
|
he
|
[ʔɛ]
|
'I'
|
|
Spanish
|
Nicaraguan[22]
|
más alto
|
[ˈma ˈʔal̻t̻o̞]
|
'higher'
|
Marginal sound or allophone of /s/ between vowels in different words. Does not occur after or before a consonant. See Spanish phonology.
|
Yucateco[23]
|
cuatro años
|
[ˈkwatɾo̞ ˈʔãɲo̞s]
|
'four years'
|
Tagalog
|
iihi
|
[ˌʔiːˈʔiːhɛʔ]
|
'will urinate'
|
See Tagalog phonology.
|
Tahitian
|
pua'a
|
[puaʔa]
|
'pig'
|
|
Thai
|
อา
|
[ʔaː]
|
'uncle'/'aunt' (father's younger sibling)
|
|
Tongan
|
tuʻu
|
[tuʔu]
|
'stand'
|
|
Tundra Nenets
|
выʼ
|
[wɨʔ]
|
'tundra'
|
|
Vietnamese[24]
|
oi
|
[ʔɔj˧]
|
'sultry'
|
In free variation with no glottal stop. See Vietnamese phonology.
|
Võro
|
piniq
|
[ˈpinʲiʔ]
|
'dogs'
|
"q" is Võro plural marker (maa, kala, "land", "fish"; maaq, kalaq, "lands", "fishes").
|
Wagiman
|
jamh
|
[t̠ʲʌmʔ]
|
'eat'PERF
|
|
Welayta
|
[ʔirʈa]
|
'wet'
|
|
Wallisian
|
ma'uli
|
[maʔuli]
|
'life'
|
|
See also
References
-
^
-
^ Brown, Gillian. 1977:27. Listening to spoken English. London: Longman.
-
^
-
^
-
^
-
^
-
^
-
^ Thelwall (1990:37)
-
^ a b Watson (2002:17)
-
^ Gussenhoven (1992:45)
-
^ Sivertsen (1960:111)
-
^ Roach (2004:240)
-
^ Ladefoged (2005:139)
-
^ Clark, Yallop & Fletcher (2007:105)
-
^ Olson et al. (2010:206–207)
-
^ Fonologia e Gramática do Nheengatu – A língua geral falada pelos povos Baré, Warekena e Baniwa (Portuguese)
-
^ João Veloso & Pedro Tiago Martins (2013). O Arquivo Dialetal do CLUP: disponibilização on-line de um corpus dialetal do português (Portuguese)
-
^ Phonetic symbols for Portuguese phonetic transcription In European Portuguese, the "é é" interjection usually employs an epenthetic /i/, being pronounced [e̞ˈje̞] instead.
-
^ It may be used mostly as a general call of attention for disapproval, disagreement or inconsistency, but also serves as a synonym of the multiuse expression "eu, hein!". (Portuguese) How to say 'eu, hein' in English – Adir Ferreira Idiomas
-
^ Blevins (1994:492)
-
^ a b Landau et al. (1999:67)
-
^ The hypo-hyperarticulation continuum in Nicaraguan Spanish
-
^ Voiceless stop aspiration in Yucatán Spanish: a sociolinguistic analysis
-
^ Thompson (1959:458–461)
Bibliography
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IPA topics
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IPA
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Phonetics
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Special topics
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Encodings
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— These tables contain phonetic symbols, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help]
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— Where symbols appear in pairs, left–right represent the voiceless–voiced consonants.
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— Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged to be impossible or not distinctive.
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Chart image
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