Occurrence
The voiceless velar fricative and its labialized variety are traditionally postulated to have occurred in Proto-Germanic, the ancestor of the Germanic languages, as the reflex of the Proto-Indo-European voiceless palatal and velar stops and the labialized voiceless velar stop. Thus Proto-Indo-European *ḱr̥nom "horn" and *kʷód "what" became Proto-Germanic *hurnan and *hwat, where *h and *hw were likely to be and . This sound change is part of Grimm's law.
In Modern Greek, the voiceless velar fricative (with its allophone the voiceless palatal fricative, occurring before front vowels) originated from the Ancient Greek voiceless aspirated stop /kʰ/ in a sound change that turned Greek aspirated stops into fricatives.
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adyghe | дахэ | 'pretty' | ||||
| Afrikaans | goed | 'well' | ||||
| Aleut | Atkan dialect | alax | 'two' | |||
| Arabic | خضراء | 'green (f)' | See Arabic phonology | |||
| Assamese | অসমীয়া | 'Assamese' | ||||
| Avar | чeхь | 'belly' | ||||
| Azerbaijani | xoş | 'pleasant' | ||||
| Breton | hor c'hi | 'our dog' | ||||
| Bulgarian | тихо tiho | 'quietly' | ||||
| Chinese | Mandarin | 河 hé | 'river' | See Standard Chinese | ||
| Czech | chlap | 'guy' | See Czech phonology | |||
| Dutch | Belgian Dutch | acht | 'eight' | More common in northern dialects. See Dutch phonology | ||
| Northern dialects | ||||||
| English | Scottish | loch | 'loch' | See English phonology | ||
| Some American speakers | yech | 'yech' | ||||
| Esperanto | monaĥo | 'monk' | See Esperanto phonology | |||
| Eyak | duxł | 'traps' | ||||
| Finnish | tuhka | 'ash' | Allophone of /h/. See Finnish phonology | |||
| Georgian | ჯოხი | 'stick' | ||||
| German | Kuchen | 'cake' | See German phonology | |||
| Greek | χαρά chará | 'joy' | See Modern Greek phonology | |||
| Hebrew | אוכל | 'food' | Most dialects. See Modern Hebrew phonology | |||
| Hindi | ख़ुशी | 'happiness' | See Hindi-Urdu phonology | |||
| Hungarian | sahhal | 'with a shah' | See Hungarian phonology | |||
| Irish | deoch | 'drink' | See Irish phonology | |||
| Kabardian | дахэ | 'pretty' | ||||
| Korean | 흠집 heumjip | 'flaw' | Occurs only before /ɯ/. See Korean phonology | |||
| Lithuanian | choras | 'chorus' | ||||
| Lojban | xatra | 'letter' | ||||
| Persian | خواهر | 'sister' | See Persian phonology | |||
| Macedonian | Охрид Ohrid | 'Ohrid' | See Macedonian phonology | |||
| Manx | aashagh | 'easy' | ||||
| Old English | wealh | 'foreigner', 'slave' | See Old English phonology | |||
| Polish | chleb | 'bread' | Also (in great majority of dialects) represented by Read more about this topic: Voiceless Velar Fricative Famous quotes containing the word occurrence:“One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.” | |||