Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvular consonants are less common than velars. They may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead.

The uvular consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

There are no uvular consonants in English. Uvular consonants are found in many African and Middle-Eastern languages, most notably Arabic, and in Native American languages. In parts of the Caucasus mountains and northwestern North America, nearly every language has uvular stops and fricatives. Two uvular Rs are found in north-western Europe, where they spread from northern French.

The voiceless uvular plosive is transcribed as in both the IPA and SAMPA. It is pronounced somewhat like the voiceless velar plosive , but with the middle of the tongue further back, against the uvula rather than the velum. The most familiar use will doubtless be in the transliteration of Arabic place names such as Qatar and Iraq into English, though, since English lacks this sound, this is generally pronounced as the most similar sound that occurs in English, .

, the voiced equivalent of , is much rarer. It is like the voiced velar plosive , but articulated in the same uvular position as . Few languages use this sound, but it is found in some varieties of Persian and in several Northeast Caucasian languages, notably Tabasaran.

The voiceless uvular fricative is similar to the voiceless velar fricative , except that it is articulated on the uvula. It is found instead of in some dialects of German and Arabic.

The Tlingit language of the Alaskan Panhandle has ten uvular consonants:

and the Ubykh language of Turkey has 20.

The Three Uvular Rs

The uvular trill is used in certain dialects of French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Abkhaz, Hebrew and Arabic, as well as Standard French and Standard German, for the letter <r> respectively the rhotic phoneme. In many of these it has the voiced and/or voiceless uvular fricative as an allophone.

As with most trills, uvular trills are often reduced to a single contact, especially between vowels.

Unlike other uvular consonants, the uvular trill is articulated without a retraction of the tongue, and therefore doesn't lower neighboring high vowels the way uvular stops commonly do.

The voiced uvular fricative is common in northern Europe: it is found in Standard Dutch as the usual value of the letter R. It is also found in some dialects of Portuguese, and a common allophone of in French (found when r is followed by a consonant); some speakers seem to use it instead of the trill at all times. Modern Israeli Hebrew also uses the voiced uvular fricative as an r.

Though not a phoneme in French, the voiceless uvular fricative is an allophone of in many sorts of French when it follows one of the voiceless stops , , or at the end of a word, as in maître .

Several other languages, including Inuktitut and some varieties of Arabic, have a voiced uvular fricative but do not treat it as an r.

In Lakhota the uvular trill is an allophone of the voiced uvular fricative, used in front of /i/.

See also

• place of articulation
• list of phonetics topics
• Guttural R

Uvular consonants

لهوي | Uvular | Consonne uvulaire | 구개수음 | עיצורים ענבליים | 口蓋垂音 | Uvular konsonant | 小舌音