Glottal stop
ʔ
Image
IPA number	113
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʔ
Unicode (hex)	U+0294
X-SAMPA	?
Kirshenbaum	?
Sound

The glottal stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or ʻokina in Hawaiʻi among those using a preservative pronunciation of that name.

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʔ⟩. It is called the glottal stop because the technical term for the gap between the vocal folds, which is closed up in the production of this sound, is the glottis.

  Phonetic and phonological features

Features of the glottal stop:

• Its manner of articulation is occlusive, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. Since the consonant is also oral, with no nasal outlet, the airflow is blocked entirely, and the consonant is a stop.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibration of the vocal cords; necessarily so, because the vocal cords are held tightly together, preventing vibration.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the central–lateral dichotomy does not apply.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

  Phonology and symbolization of the glottal stop in selected languages

While this segment is not a written^[1] phoneme in English, it is present phonetically in nearly all dialects of English as an allophone of /t/ in the syllable coda. Speakers of Cockney, Scottish English and several other British dialects also pronounce an intervocalic /t/ between vowels as in city. Standard English inserts a glottal stop before a tautosyllabic voiceless stop, e.g. sto’p, tha’t, kno’ck, wa’tch, also lea’p, soa’k, hel’p, pin’ch.^[2]

In many languages that don't allow a sequence of vowels, such as Persian, the glottal stop may be used to break up such a hiatus. There are intricate interactions between falling tone and the glottal stop in the histories of such languages as Danish (cf. stød), Chinese and Thai.^{[citation needed]}

In the traditional Romanization of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with an apostrophe, ⟨’⟩, and this is the source of the IPA character ⟨ʔ⟩. In many Polynesian languages that use the Latin alphabet, however, the glottal stop is written with a reversed apostrophe, ⟨‘⟩ (called ‘okina in Hawaiian and Samoan), which, confusingly, is also used to transcribe the Arabic ayin and is the source of the IPA character for the voiced pharyngeal fricative ⟨ʕ⟩. In Malay the glottal stop is represented by the letter ⟨k⟩, in Võro and Maltese by ⟨q⟩.

Other scripts also have letters used for representing the glottal stop, such as the Hebrew letter aleph ⟨א⟩, and the Cyrillic letter palochka ⟨Ӏ⟩ used in several Caucasian languages. In Tundra Nenets it is represented by the letters apostrophe ⟨ʼ⟩ and double apostrophe ⟨ˮ⟩. In Japanese, glottal stops occur at the end of interjections of surprise or anger, and are represented by the character っ.

In the graphic representation of most Philippine languages, the glottal stop has no consistent symbolization. In most cases, however, a word that begins with a vowel-letter (e.g. Tagalog aso 'dog') is always pronounced with an unrepresented glottal stop before that vowel (as also in Modern German and Hausa). Some orthographies employ a hyphen, instead of the reverse apostrophe, if the glottal stop occurs in the middle of the word (e.g. Tagalog pag-ibig 'love'). When it occurs in the end of a Tagalog word, the last vowel is written with a circumflex accent (if the accent is on the last syllable) or a grave accent (if the accent occurs at the penultimate syllable).

Some Canadian indigenous languages have adopted the phonetic symbol "ʔ" itself as part of their orthographies. In some of them, it occurs as a pair of uppercase and lowercase characters, Ɂ and ɂ.^[3]

  Occurrence

  See also

• List of phonetics topics
• Stød in Danish
• Saltillo
• Hamza in Arabic
• T-glottalization in English

  References

  Bibliography

• Blevins, Juliette (1994), "The Bimoraic Foot in Rotuman Phonology and Morphology", Oceanic Linguistics 33 (2): 491–516, DOI:10.2307/3623138, JSTOR 3623138 
• Clark, John Ellery; Yallop, Colin; Fletcher, Janet (2007), An introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 1-4051-3083-0, 9781405130837, http://books.google.com/books?id=dX5P5mxtYYIC 
• Gussenhoven, Carlos (1992), "Dutch", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (2): 45–47, DOI:10.1017/S002510030000459X 
• Ladefoged, Peter (2005), Vowels and Consonants (Second ed.), Blackwell, ISBN 0-631-21411-9 
• Olson, Kenneth; Mielke, Jeff; Sanicas-Daguman, Josephine; Pebley, Carol Jean; Paterson, Hugh J., III (2010), "The phonetic status of the (inter)dental approximant", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 40 (2): 199–215, DOI:10.1017/S0025100309990296 
• Roach, Peter (2004), "British English: Received Pronunciation", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (2): 239–245, DOI:10.1017/S0025100304001768 
• Schane, Sanford A (1968), French Phonology and Morphology, Boston, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, ISBN 0-262-19040-0 
• Sivertsen, Eva (1960), Cockney Phonology, Oslo: University of Oslo 
• Thelwall, Robin (1990), "Illustrations of the IPA: Arabic", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 20 (2): 37–41, DOI:10.1017/S0025100300004266 
• Thompson, Laurence (1959), "Saigon phonemics", Language 35 (3): 454–476, DOI:10.2307/411232, JSTOR 411232 
• Watson, Janet (2002), The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-824137-2 

International Phonetic Alphabet   IPA topics IPA International Phonetic Association History of the IPA Kiel convention (1989) Journal of the IPA (JIPA) Naming conventions Phonetics Diacritics* Segments Tone letter Place of articulation Manner of articulation Special topics Case variants of IPA letters Extensions to the IPA Obsolete and nonstandard symbols IPA chart for English dialects Encodings SAMPA X-SAMPA Conlang X-SAMPA Kirshenbaum TIPA Phonetic symbols in Unicode WorldBet   Consonants       IPA pulmonic consonantschart image • audio Place → Labial Coronal Dorsal Radical Glottal ↓ Manner Bila​bial Labio-​dental Den​tal Alve​olar Post-​alv. Retro​flex Alveolo-​palatal Pal​a​tal Ve​lar Uvu​lar Pha​ryn​geal Epi​glot​tal Glot​tal Nasal m̥ m ɱ n̪ n̥ n n̠ ɳ ɲ̊ ɲ ŋ̊ ŋ ɴ Stop p b p̪ b̪ t̪ d̪ t d ʈ ɖ c ɟ k ɡ q ɢ ʡ ʔ Fricative ɸ β f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ ʂ ʐ ɕ ʑ ç ʝ x ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ h ɦ Approximant ʋ ɹ ɻ j ɰ Flap or tap ⱱ̟ ⱱ ɾ ɽ ɢ̆ ʡ̯ Trill ʙ r̥ r ɽ͡r ʀ ᴙ * Lateral Fric. ɬ ɮ ɭ˔̊ ʎ̥˔ ʟ̝̊ ʟ̝ Lateral Appr. l ɭ ʎ ʟ Lateral flap ɺ ɺ̠ ʎ̯ ʟ̆ Non-pulmonic consonants Clicks ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ ʘ̃ ʘ̃ˀ ʘ͡q ʘ͡qʼ ‼ Implosives ɓ ɗ ʄ ᶑ ɠ ʛ Ejectives pʼ tʼ cʼ ʈʼ kʼ qʼ fʼ θʼ sʼ ɬʼ xʼ χʼ tsʼ tɬʼ cʎ̝̥ʼ tʃʼ ʈʂʼ kxʼ kʟ̝̊ʼ Affricates p̪f b̪v ts dz tʃ dʒ tɕ dʑ ʈʂ ɖʐ tɬ dɮ cç ɟʝ cʎ̥˔ kʟ̝̊ Co-articulated consonants Continuants ʍ w ɥ ɧ Occlusives k͡p ɡ͡b ŋ͡m These tables contain phonetic symbols, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help] Where symbols appear in pairs, left—right represent the voiceless—voiced consonants. Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged to be impossible. * Symbol not defined in IPA. Chart image Pulmonics Non-pulmonics Affricates Co-articulated   Vowels Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back Close •iy •ɨʉ •ɯu •ɪʏ •ɪ̈ʊ̈ •ʊ •eø •ɘɵ •ɤo •e̞ø̞ ə •ɤ̞o̞ •ɛœ •ɜɞ •ʌɔ •æ ɐ •aɶ •ä •ɑɒ Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Vowels: IPA help • chart •  chart with audio • view