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Voiceless nasal glottal approximant

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Voiceless nasal glottal approximant

The voiceless nasal glottal approximant is a type of consonantal sound, a nasal approximant, used in some oral languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨⟩, that is, an h with a tilde.

Occurrence

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The h sound is nasalized in several languages, apparently due to a connection between glottal and nasal sounds called rhinoglottophilia. Examples of languages where the only h-like sound is nasalized are Krim, Lisu, and Pirahã.

More rarely, a language will contrast oral /h/ and nasal /h̃/. Two such languages are neighboring Bantu languages of Angola and Namibia, Kwangali and Mbukushu. In these languages, vowels following /h̃/ are nasalized, though nasal vowels do not occur elsewhere. A distinction is also reported from Wolaytta, though in that case the nasal is rare.

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Basque Souletin dialect[1] ahate [ãˈh̃ãte] 'duck'
Carapana[2] hʉ̃gẽ́ [h̃ĩŋɛ̃́] 'god' Allophone of [h] before nasal vowels.
Kaingang[3] hũg [h̃ũŋ] 'hawk' Possible word-initial realization of /h/ before a nasal vowel.[3]
Kwangali[4] nhonho [h̃õh̃õ] Tribulus species
Khoekhoegowab Damara dialect hû [h̃ũː] 'six' Free variation[clarification needed]
Tofa[5] [example needed] [iʔh̃jon] 'twenty'

Notes

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  1. ^ Hualde & Ortiz de Urbina (2003), p. 25.
  2. ^ Metzger, Ronald; Metzger, Lois (1973). "Fonología del carapana". Sistemas fonológicos de idiomas columbianos (in Spanish). Vol. 2. Instituto Lingüístico de Verano. pp. 121–132.
  3. ^ a b Jolkesky (2009), pp. 676, 681.
  4. ^ Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996), pp. 132–3.
  5. ^ "Karagas". mpi-lingweb.shh.mpg.de. Archived from the original on 2021-06-24. Retrieved 2020-12-18.

References

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