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.

Voiceless nasal glottal approximant

Occurrence

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.

LanguageWordIPAMeaningNotes
BasqueSouletin dialect[1]ahate[ãˈh̃ãte]'duck'
Kaingang[2] hũg [h̃ũŋ] 'hawk' Possible word-initial realization of /h/ before a nasal vowel.[2]
Kwangali[3]nhonho[h̃õh̃õ]Tribulus species
Khoekhoegowab Damara dialect hû [h̃ũː] 'six' free variation
Tofa[4] иʔһён [iʔh̃jon] 'twenty' no separate letter for /h̃/, the same letter is used as the one for /h/.

Notes

  1. Hualde & Ortiz de Urbina (2003), p. 25.
  2. Jolkesky (2009), pp. 676, 681.
  3. Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996), pp. 132–3.
  4. "Karagas". mpi-lingweb.shh.mpg.de. Retrieved 2020-12-18.

References

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