Home > Uvular consonant
Uvular consonants are articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Most uvular consonants are either stops or fricatives, but a very small number of languages use them as nasals, trills, or approximants.
The uvular consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are:
| IPA Symbol | Name | Example | Meaning
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| q | voiceless uvular plosive
| Mishnaic Hebrew | [qoːɸ] | קוף qôph
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| ɢ | voiced uvular plosive
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| ɴ | uvular nasalThe uvular nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N\. Features of this consonant: Its manner of articulati
| JapaneseThe Japanese language is a spoken and written language used mainly in Japan. The Japanese name for the language is Nihongo . History and classification Historical linguists do not all agree about the origin of the Japanese language; there are several comp | [ɲi.hɔɴ] | 日本 Nihon
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| ʀ | uvular trillThe uvular trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is R\. Features of this consonant: Its manner of articulati
| ParisianEiffel Tower has become the symbol of Paris throughout the world. Paris is the capital and largest city of France. The city is built on an arc of the River Seine, and is thus divided into two parts: the Right Bank to the north and the smaller Left Bank to FrenchFrench le francais la langue francaise is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered only by Spanish and Portuguese. French is the 11th most spoken language in the world, spoken by about 77 million people (called Francophones) as a mother to | [pa.ˈʀi] | Paris
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| χ | voiceless uvular fricativeThe voiceless uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is X. Features of this consonant: Its manner
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| ʁ | voiced uvular fricativeThe voiced uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is R. Features of this consonant: Its manner of
| IsraeliThis article discusses the State of Israel. For other meanings of Israel see Israel (disambiguation). The State of Israel Medinat Yisrael in Hebrew, Daulat Israil in Arabic) is a country in the Middle East on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea. Hebrew | [ʁeiʃ] | רישׁ reish
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Uvular consonants are found in many African and Middle-Eastern languages, most notably Arabic, and in Native American languages. The Uvular R is also found in both French and German.
The voiceless uvular plosive is expressed as /q/ in most transliteration schemes, including the IPA and SAMPA, and is pronounced similarly to the voiceless velar plosive /k/, but with the middle of one's tongue against the soft uvula rather than the velum. The most familiar use will doubtless be in the transliteration of Arabic place names to English (such as Qatar and Iraq), though, since English lacks this phoneme, most English speakers pronounce the sound as the nearest equivalent, /k/.
/ɢ/, the voiced equivalent of /q/, is much rarer. It is written in SAMPA as /G\/. It sounds like the voiced velar plosive /g/ articulated in the same uvular position as /q/. No widely-used language uses this sound, except some varieties of Persian.
