Voiceless Glottal Fricative
The voiceless glottal transition, commonly called a "fricative", is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant phonologically, but often lacks the usual phonetic characteristics of a consonant. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨h⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is h.
Although has been described as a voiceless vowel, 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:
have been described as voiceless or breathy voiced counterparts of the vowels that follow them 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 which show a more definite displacement of the formant frequencies for h, suggesting it has a constriction associated with its production.
Read more about Voiceless Glottal Fricative: Features, Occurrence
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