Uvular ejective fricative

Uvular ejective fricative
χ’
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The uvular ejective fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨χʼ⟩.

Features

Features of the uvular ejective fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is uvular, which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) at the uvula.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• The airstream mechanism is ejective (glottalic egressive), which means the air is forced out by pumping the glottis upward.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Tlingit		xh'aan		'fire'

An allophone of /q'/ in Georgian.

See also

• Index of phonetics articles