The voiced pharyngeal approximant/fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?\.

Although traditionally placed in the fricative row of the IPA chart, is usually an approximant. The IPA symbol itself is ambiguous, but no language has a distinct fricative and approximant at this place of articulation. Sometimes the lowering diacritic is used to specify that the manner is approximant, , or a raising diacritic may be used to show that it is fricative, .

Features

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Features of the voiced pharyngeal approximant/fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is approximant, or occasionally fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a channel at the place of articulation that is not usually narrow enough to cause turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is pharyngeal which means it is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• Because it is pronounced in the throat, without a component in the mouth, the central/lateral dichotomy does not apply.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Occurs in

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Danish has a pharyngeal approximant for r in normal speech. In distinct, old fashioned pronunciation, as on the stage, the Danish r may be a pharyngeal fricative.

This sound also occurs in Agul, a dialect of Burkixan.

Pharyngeal consonants are not widespread. Many languages claimed to have pharyngeal fricatives or approximants turn out on closer inspection to have epiglottal consonants instead. For example, the candidate sound in Arabic and standard Hebrew (Israelis of European background generally pronounce this as a glottal stop) has been variously described as a voiced epiglottal fricative, an epiglottal approximant, or a pharyngealized glottal stop.

See also

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• List of phonetics topics

Fricative consonants | Approximants

Stimmhafter pharyngaler Frikativ | Consonne fricative pharyngale voisée | Fricativa faringale sonora | 有声咽頭摩擦音 | Tonande faryngal frikativa