Uvular Consonants - Descriptions in Different Languages

Descriptions in Different Languages

English has no uvular consonants, and they are unknown in the indigenous languages of Australia and the Pacific. Uvular consonants are however found in many African and Middle-Eastern languages, most notably Arabic, and in Native American languages. In parts of the Caucasus mountains and northwestern North America, nearly every language has uvular stops and fricatives. Two uvular Rs are found in north-western Europe. It was once thought that they spread from northern French, but some linguists believe that contact does not explain the appearance of all uvular Rs in Europe.

The voiceless uvular stop is transcribed as in both the IPA and SAMPA. It is pronounced somewhat like the voiceless velar stop, but with the middle of the tongue further back on the velum, against or near the uvula. The most familiar use will doubtless be in the transliteration of Arabic place names such as Qatar and Iraq into English, though, since English lacks this sound, this is generally pronounced as, the most similar sound that occurs in English.

, the voiced equivalent of, is much rarer. It is like the voiced velar stop, but articulated in the same uvular position as . Few languages use this sound, but it is found in some varieties of Persian and in several Northeast Caucasian languages, notably Tabasaran. It may also occur as an allophone of another uvular consonant - in Kazakh, the voiced uvular stop is an allophone of the voiced uvular fricative after the velar nasal.

The voiceless uvular fricative is similar to the voiceless velar fricative, except that it is articulated near the uvula. It is found instead of in some dialects of German, Spanish and Arabic.

Uvular flaps have been reported for Kube (Trans–New Guinea) and for the variety of Khmer spoken in Battambang.

The Tlingit language of the Alaskan Panhandle has ten uvular consonants:

and the Ubykh language of Turkey has 20.