Uvular consonant

Descriptions in different languages

English has no uvular consonants (at least in most major dialects), and they are largely unknown in the indigenous languages of Australia and the Pacific, though uvular consonants separate from velar consonants are believed to have existed in the Proto-Oceanic language and are attested in the modern Formosan languages of Taiwan, while a uvular approximant may occur in Arrernte. Uvular consonants are, however, found in many Middle-Eastern and African languages, most notably Arabic and Somali, 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 R phonemes are found in various languages in northwestern Europe, including French, some Occitan dialects, a majority of German dialects, some Dutch dialects, and Danish. Uvulars are almost unknown in the Indian subcontinent, but have been found in Malto and Kusunda natively. However, several languages spoken in the northwest of the subcontinent have loaned uvular consonants from Arabic and even Persian, especially languages that were spoken in places that were under Muslim rule for long periods of time, such as Punjabi.

The voiceless uvular stop is transcribed as in the IPA. It is pronounced somewhat like the voiceless velar stop , but with the middle of the tongue further back on the velum, against or near the uvula. 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 uvular ejective, is found in Ubykh, Tlingit, Cusco Quechua, and some others. In Georgian, the existence of this phoneme is debatable, since the general realization of the letter "ყ" is . This is due to merging with and therefore being influenced by this merger and becoming .

, the voiced equivalent of , is much rarer. It is like the voiced velar stop , but articulated in the same uvular position as . Few languages use this sound, but it is found in Iranian Persian (and allophonicly in other varieties of Persian) and in some Northeast Caucasian languages, notably Tabasaran, and Pacific Northwest, such as Kwakʼwala. It may also occur as an allophone of another uvular consonant. In Kazakh, the voiced uvular stop is an allophone of the voiced uvular fricative after the velar nasal.

The voiceless uvular fricative is similar to the voiceless velar fricative , except that it is articulated near the uvula. It is found in Georgian, and instead of in some dialects of German, Spanish, and colloquial Arabic, as well as in some Dutch varieties and in standard Afrikaans.

Uvular flaps have been reported for Kube (Trans–New Guinea), Hamtai (Angan family), and for the variety of Khmer spoken in Battambang province.

The Enqi dialect of the Bai language has an unusually complete series of uvular consonants consisting of the stops /q/, /qʰ/ and /ɢ/, the fricatives /χ/ and /ʁ/, and the nasal /ɴ/. All of these contrast with a corresponding velar consonant of the same manner of articulation. The existence of the uvular nasal is especially unusual, even more so than the existence of the voiced stop.

The Tlingit language of the Alaska Panhandle has ten uvular consonants, all of which are voiceless obstruents, while the extinct Ubykh language of Turkey has twenty. The Tlingit uvular consonants are:

Phonological representation

In featural phonology, uvular consonants are most often considered to contrast with velar consonants in terms of being [−high] and [+back]. Prototypical uvulars also appear to be [−ATR].

Two variants can then be established. Since palatalized consonants are [−back], the appearance of palatalized uvulars in a few languages such as Ubykh is difficult to account for. According to Vaux (1999), they possibly hold the features [+high], [−back], [−ATR], the last being the distinguishing feature from a palatalized velar consonant.

Uvular rhotics

The uvular trill is used in certain dialects (especially those associated with European capitals) of French, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, as well as sometimes in Modern Hebrew, for the rhotic phoneme. In many of these it has a uvular fricative (either voiced or voiceless ) as an allophone when it follows one of the voiceless stops , , or at the end of a word, as in the French example maître , or even a uvular approximant [ʁ̞].

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.

Several other languages, including Inuktitut, Abkhaz, Uyghur and some varieties of Arabic, have a voiced uvular fricative but do not treat it as a rhotic consonant. However, Modern Hebrew and some modern varieties of Arabic also both have at least one uvular fricative that is considered non-rhotic, and one that is considered rhotic.

In Lakhota the uvular trill is an allophone of the voiced uvular fricative before .