The voiceless glottal transition, commonly called a "fricative

Fricative consonant

Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...

", is a type of sound used in some spoken language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

s which patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...

 phonologically

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

, but often lacks the usual phonetic

Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...

 characteristics of a consonant. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet

International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...

 that represents this sound is h, and the equivalent X-SAMPA

X-SAMPA

The Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C. Wells, professor of phonetics at the University of London. It is designed to unify the individual language SAMPA alphabets, and extend SAMPA to cover the entire range of characters in the...

 symbol is h.

Although [h] has been described as a voiceless

Voiceless

In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...

 vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

, because in many languages it lacks the place and manner of articulation of a prototypical consonant, it also lacks the height and backness of a prototypical vowel:

[h and ɦ] have been described as voiceless or breathy voiced counterparts of the vowels that follow them [but] the shape of the vocal tract […] is often simply that of the surrounding sounds. […] Accordingly, in such cases it is more appropriate to regard h and ɦ as segments that have only a laryngeal specification, and are unmarked for all other features. There are other languages [such as Hebrew and Arabic] which show a more definite displacement of the formant frequencies for h, suggesting it has a [glottal] constriction associated with its production.

Features

Features of the "voiceless glottal fricative":

• In some languages, it has the constricted manner of articulation
  Manner of articulation
  In linguistics, manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, jaw, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants, even though the movement of the articulars will also greatly alter the resonant properties of the...
  
   of a fricative
  Fricative consonant
  Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
  
  . However, in many if not most it is a transitional state of the glottis, with no manner of articulation other than its phonation type. Because there is no other constriction to produce friction in the vocal tract in the languages they are familiar with, many phoneticians no longer consider [h] to be a fricative. However, the term "fricative" is generally retained for historical reasons.
• It may have a glottal
  Glottal consonant
  Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
  
   place of articulation
  Place of articulation
  In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator , and a passive location...
  
  . However, it may have no fricative articulation, in which case the term 'glottal' only refers to the nature of its phonation, and does not describe the location of the stricture nor the turbulence. All consonants except for the glottals, and all vowels, have an individual place of articulation in addition to the state of the glottis. As with all other consonants, surrounding vowels influence the pronunciation [h], and [h] has sometimes been presented as a voiceless vowel, having the place of articulation of these surrounding vowels.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...	Meaning	Notes
Arabic Arabic language Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...	Standard		[ˈhaːt̪if]	'telephone'	See Arabic phonology Arabic phonology While many languages have numerous dialects that differ in pronunciation, the Arabic language is more properly described as a continuum of varieties. This article deals primarily with Modern Standard Arabic, which is the standard variety shared by educated speakers throughout Arabic-speaking regions...
Armenian Armenian language The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...				'Armenian'
Asturian Asturian language Asturian is a Romance language of the West Iberian group, Astur-Leonese Subgroup, spoken in the Spanish Region of Asturias by the Asturian people...			[ɣwahe]	'child'	Mainly present in eastern dialects
Avar Avar language The modern Avar language belongs to the Avar–Andic group of the Northeast Caucasian language family....			[ha]	'oath'
Basque Basque language Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...	North-Eastern dialects		[hiɾur]	'three'
Chechen Chechen language The Chechen language is spoken by more than 1.5 million people, mostly in Chechnya and by Chechen people elsewhere. It is a member of the Northeast Caucasian languages.-Classification:...		/	[hɑrɐ]	'this'
Chinese Chinese language The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...	Cantonese	/	[hɔː]	'river'	See Cantonese phonology Cantonese phonology The standard pronunciation of the Cantonese language is that of Guangzhou, also known as Canton, the capital of Guangdong Province. Hong Kong Cantonese is related to the Guangzhou dialect, and the two diverge only slightly...
Coptic Coptic language Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the current stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the 1st century...			[ehra]	'face'
Dutch Dutch language Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...	Some Hollandic dialects		[haːt]	'hate'	Realized as [ɦ] in other dialects. See Dutch phonology Dutch phonology Dutch is a Germanic language and as such has a similar phonology to other Germanic languages...
English English language English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...			[ˈhaɪ]	'high'	See English phonology English phonology English phonology is the study of the sound system of the English language. Like many languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect...
Faroese Faroese language Faroese , is an Insular Nordic language spoken by 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 25,000 Faroese people in Denmark and elsewhere...			[hoːn]	'she'
Finnish Finnish language Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...			[hɑmːɑs]	'tooth'	See Finnish phonology Finnish phonology Unless otherwise noted, statements in this article refer to Standard Finnish, which is based on the dialect spoken in Häme Province in central south Finland. Standard Finnish is used by professional speakers, such as the reporters and the news presenters on television.-Vowels:Phonetically, the...
Georgian Georgian language Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...			[hɑvɑ]	'climate'
German German language German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....			[has]	'hatred'	See German phonology German phonology This article is about the phonology of the German language based on standard German. It deals with current phonology and phonetics as well as with historical developments thereof, including geographical variants .Since German is a pluricentric language, there are a number of different...
Hawaiian Hawaiian language The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...			[haka]	'shelf'	See Hawaiian phonology Hawaiian phonology This article is a linguistic description of the phonological system of Hawaiian based on documented experiences of the people who developed the Hawaiian alphabet during the 1820s and scholarly research on the Hawaiian language conducted by lexicographers and linguists from 1949 to present.Hawaiian...
Hebrew Hebrew language Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...			[haʁ]	'mountain'	See Modern Hebrew phonology
Hindi	Standard		[ˈhəm]	'we'	See Hindi-Urdu phonology Hindi-Urdu phonology Modern Standard Hindi is the official language of India, while Urdu is the national language of Pakistan as well as a scheduled language in India...
Hmong Hmong language Hmong or Mong is the common name for a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmong–Mien/Miao–Yao language family spoken by the Hmong people of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos...			[haɨ̰]	'to honor'
Hungarian Hungarian language Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....			[hɛjɛʃ]	'right'	See Hungarian phonology Hungarian phonology Hungarian phonology is notable for its process of vowel harmony, the frequent use of geminate consonants and the presence of otherwise uncommon palatal stops.- Consonants :...
Japanese Japanese language is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...		すはだ Kana Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji... /	[sɯhada]	'bare skin'	See Japanese phonology Japanese phonology This article deals with the phonology of the Japanese language.-Consonants:The Japanese vowels are pronounced as monophthongs, unlike in English; except for , they are similar to their Spanish or Italian counterparts....
Korean Korean language Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...		/	[hoɾaŋi]	'tiger'	See Korean phonology Korean phonology This article is a technical description of the phonetics and phonology of Korean.Korean has many allophones, so it is important here to distinguish morphophonemics from corresponding phonemes and allophones .-Consonants:The following are phonemic transcriptions of Korean consonants.# are voiced ...
Kabardian Kabardian language The Kabardian language, also known as East Circassian , is a Northwest Caucasian language, closely related to the Adyghe language. It is spoken mainly in the Russian republics of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia and in Turkey and the Middle East...			[tχɪɬhɑ]	'books'
Lao Lao language Lao or Laotian is a tonal language of the Tai–Kadai language family. It is the official language of Laos, and also spoken in the northeast of Thailand, where it is usually referred to as the Isan language. Being the primary language of the Lao people, Lao is also an important second language for...		ຫ້າ	[haː˧˩]	'five'
Leonese Leonese language The Leonese language is the endonym term used to refer to all vernacular Romance dialects of the Astur-Leonese linguistic group in the Spanish provinces of León and Zamora; Astur-Leonese also includes the dialects...			[wahe]	'boy'
Malay Malay language Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...			[hari]	'day'
Navajo Navajo language Navajo or Navaho is an Athabaskan language spoken in the southwestern United States. It is geographically and linguistically one of the Southern Athabaskan languages .Navajo has more speakers than any other Native American language north of the...			[hàsd̥ìːn]	align="center"	|
Norwegian Norwegian language Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...			[hɑtː]	'hat'	See Norwegian phonology Norwegian phonology The sound system of Norwegian resembles that of Swedish. There is considerable variation among the dialects, but the variant generally taught to foreign students is Standard Eastern Norwegian, which is the one described in this article.-Consonants:...
Pashto Pashto language Pashto , known as Afghani in Persian and Pathani in Punjabi , is the native language of the indigenous Pashtun people or Afghan people who are found primarily between an area south of the Amu Darya in Afghanistan and...		هو Nasta'liq script ' is one of the main script styles used in writing the Perso-Arabic script, and traditionally the predominant style in Persian calligraphy. It was developed in Iran in the 8th and 9th centuries...	[ho]	'yes'
Persian Persian language Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...			[hæft]	'seven'	See Persian phonology Persian phonology The Persian language has six vowel phonemes and twenty-three consonant phonemes. It features contrastive stress and syllable-final consonant clusters.-Vowels:...
Pirahã Pirahã language Pirahã is a language spoken by the Pirahã. The Pirahã are an indigenous people of Amazonas, Brazil, living along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon....			[hì]	'he'
Portuguese Portuguese language Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...	Brazilian Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....		[ˈkahʊ]	'car'	Also realized as a velar or uvular fricative. See Portuguese phonology Portuguese phonology The phonology of Portuguese can vary considerably between dialects, in extreme cases leading to difficulties in intelligibility. This article focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard...
Romanian Romanian language Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...			[həts]	'bridle'	See Romanian phonology Romanian phonology This article discusses the phonology of the Romanian language. For other details on this language the reader is referred to that article....
Spanish Spanish language Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...	Many dialects		[o̞ˈβihpo̞]	'bishop'	Allophone of /s/. See Spanish phonology Spanish phonology This article is about the phonology and phonetics of the Spanish language. Unless otherwise noted, statements refer to Castilian Spanish, the standard dialect used in Spain on radio and television. For historical development of the sound system see History of Spanish...
	Some dialects		[ˈhaka]	'pony'	corresponds to /x/ in other dialects.
Thai Thai language Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...			[haː˥˩]	'five'
Turkish Turkish language Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...			[häˈɫɯ]	'carpet'	See Turkish phonology Turkish phonology The phonology of the Turkish language describes the set of sounds and their relationships with one another in spoken Turkish. One characteristic feature of Turkish is a system of vowel harmony that distinguishes between front and back vowels. The majority of words in Turkish adhere to a system of...
Ubykh Ubykh language Ubykh or Ubyx is an extinct language of the Northwestern Caucasian group, spoken by the Ubykh people...		[dwaha]		'prayer'	See Ubykh phonology Ubykh phonology Ubykh, a North-West Caucasian language, has the largest consonant inventory of all documented languages that do not use clicks, and also has the most disproportional ratio of phonemic consonants to vowels. It also possesses consonants in at least eight, perhaps nine, basic places of articulation...
Urdu	Standard		[ˈhəm]	'we'	See Hindi-Urdu phonology Hindi-Urdu phonology Modern Standard Hindi is the official language of India, while Urdu is the national language of Pakistan as well as a scheduled language in India...
Vietnamese Vietnamese language Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...			[hjew˧˩˧]	'understand'	See Vietnamese phonology Vietnamese phonology This article is a technical description of the sound system of the Vietnamese language, including phonetics and phonology.-Consonants:Two main varieties of Vietnamese, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, are described below.-Hanoi:...
Welsh Welsh language Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...			[ˈhaɨl]	'sun'	See Welsh orthography
West Frisian West Frisian language West Frisian is a language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands. West Frisian is the name by which this language is usually known outside the Netherlands, to distinguish it from the closely related Frisian languages of Saterland Frisian and North Frisian,...			[hukə]	'corner'
Yi Yi language Nuosu , also known as Northern Yi, Liangshan Yi, and Sichuan Yi, is the prestige language of the Yi people; it has been chosen by the Chinese government as the standard Yi language and, as such, is the only one taught in school, both in its oral and written form...		/	[ha˧]	'hundred'