Voiceless pharyngeal fricative

The voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is an h-bar, ⟨ħ⟩. In the transcription of Arabic and other scripts, it is often written ⟨Ḥ⟩, ⟨ḥ⟩.

Typically characterized as a fricative in the upper pharynx, it is often a whispered [h].

Features

Features of the voiceless pharyngeal fricative:

Pharyngeal consonant

A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, from (ary)epiglottal consonants, or "low" pharyngeals, which are articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis in the lower larynx, and even epiglotto-pharyngeal consonants consisting of both those movements combined. Stops and trills can only be reliably produced at the epiglottis, while fricatives can only be reliably produced in the upper pharynx. When these are treated as distinct places of articulation, the term radical consonant may be used as a cover term, or people may speak of guttural consonants instead.

In many languages, pharyngeal consonants trigger retraction of neighboring vowels, but in others they do not. Pharyngeals thereby differ from uvulars, which nearly always trigger retraction. For example, in Arabic, the vowel /a/ is fronted to [æ] next to pharyngeals, but retracted to [ɑ] next to uvulars, as in حال [ħæːl] 'condition' with a pharyngeal fricative and a fronted vowel, vs. خال [χɑːl] 'maternal uncle' with a uvular consonant and a retracted vowel.