Guttural sound

Guttural speech sounds are those with a primary place of articulation near the back of the oral cavity, where it is difficult to distinguish a sound's place of articulation and its phonation. In popular usage, it is an imprecise term for sounds produced relatively far back in the vocal tract, such as the German ch or the Arabic heth and ayin, but not simple glottal sounds like h. The term 'guttural language' is used for languages that have such sounds.

As a technical term used by phoneticians and phonologists, guttural has had various definitions. The concept always includes pharyngeal consonants, but may also include velar, uvular, or laryngeal consonants.

Guttural sounds are typically consonants, but murmured, pharyngealized, glottalized and strident vowels may also be considered guttural in nature.

Some phonologists argue that all post-velar sounds constitute a natural class.Scott Moisik, Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins & John Esling (2021) Phonological potentials and the lower vocal tract

Meaning and etymology

The word guttural literally means 'of the throat' (from Latin guttur, meaning throat), and was first used by phoneticians to describe the Hebrew glottal (א) and (ה), uvular (ח) (for Israeli Hebrew speakers), and pharyngeal (ח) and (ע).See Oxford English Dictionary entry

English speakers commonly use the term non-technically, especially in America, to refer to sounds that subjectively appear harsh or grating. This definition usually includes several consonants that are not used in American English, such as epiglottals and , uvulars (namely fricatives and , stops and , and nasal ), and velars (only fricatives and ). However, it usually excludes sounds used in English, such as the velar stops and , the velar nasal , and the glottal consonants and .McCarthy, John J. 1989. 'Guttural Phonology', ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst.McCarthy, John J. Forthcoming. 'Guttural Transparency', ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Guttural languages

In popular consciousness, languages that make extensive use of guttural consonants are often considered to be guttural languages. Some English-speakers sometimes find such languages strange and even hard on the ear.Hayward, K. M. and Hayward, R. J. 1989. '"Guttural": Arguments for a New Distinctive Feature', Transactions of the Philological Society 87: 179-193.

Examples of significant usage

Languages that extensively use the velar and uvular guttural consonants include: Afrikaans, Arabic, Armenian, Assamese, Assyrian,Beyer, Klaus (1986). The Aramaic language: its distribution and subdivisions. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. .Brock, Sebastian (2006). An Introduction to Syriac Studies. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. . Azerbaijani,Shiraliyev, Mammadagha. The Baku Dialect. Azerbaijan SSR Academy of Sciences Publ.: Baku, 1957; p. 41 Bengali (in the eastern dialects due to the debuccalization, and other varieties of Bengali considered to be their own languages; see Bengali phonology), Crimean Tatar, Dutch,Friedrich Maurer uses the term Istvaeonic instead of Franconian; see Friedrich Maurer (1942), Nordgermanen und Alemannen: Studien zur germanischen und frühdeutschen Sprachgeschichte, Stammes- und Volkskunde, Bern: Verlag Francke. English (some dialects including Scots, Scottish English and Irish/Hiberno-English), French, German,For a history of the German consonants see Fausto Cercignani, The Consonants of German: Synchrony and Diachrony, Milano, Cisalpino, 1979. Greek, Hebrew, Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Inuktitut, Irish, Kartvelian languages (i.e., Georgian, Mingrelian, Laz, Svan),Boeder (2002), p. 3Boeder (2005), p. 6Gamkrelidze (1966), p. 69Fähnrich & Sardzhveladze (2000) Kazakh, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Lakota, Mandarin Chinese, Manx, Mongolian, Noakhali, Pashto, PersianLazard, Gilbert, "Pahlavi, Pârsi, dari: Les langues d'Iran d'apès Ibn al-Muqaffa" in R.N. Frye, Iran and Islam. In Memory of the late Vladimir Minorsky, Edinburgh University Press, 1971. (including Tajik)A Beginners' Guide to Tajiki by Azim Baizoyev and John Hayward, Routledge, London and New York, 2003, p. 3 Punjabi, Russian, Scots, Scottish Gaelic,Bauer, Michael Blas na Gàidhlig - The Practical Guide to Gaelic Pronunciation (2011) Akerbeltz Sindhi, Spanish, Sylheti, Tamil (chiefly in Brahmin Tamil as well as in the non-standard variety of Sri Lankan Tamil due to the debuccalization; see Tamil phonology), Tswana, Turkmen, Uzbek, Uyghur, Vedic Sanskrit (i.e., the jihvāmūlīya ( ẖ) represented by the visarga), and Welsh.

In addition to their usage of the aforementioned consonants, the following languages also use the pharnygeal gutturals : Berber languages (i.e. Kabyle, Tamasheq), Cushitic languages (i.e. Somali and Oromo)Richard Hayward, "Afroasiatic", in Heine & Nurse, 2000, African Languages Anatolian Turkish dialects (as a result of borrowings from Arabic), Northeast Caucasian languages (i.e. Chechen, Lezgian, Avar), Northwest Caucasian (i.e. Abkhaz, Adyghe, Kabardian),Nichols, J. 1997 Nikolaev and Starostin's North Caucasian Etymological Dictionary and the Methodology of Long-Range Comparison: an assessment Paper presented at the 10th Biennial Non-Slavic Languages (NSL) Conference, Chicago, 8–10 May 1997.Row 7 in Salishan and Wakashan language families in British Columbia, and Semitic languages (i.e. Arabic, Sureth, Tigre, Tigrinya, Turoyo, Hebrew, Ge’ez)..

Examples of partial usage In French, the only truly guttural sound is (usually) a voiced uvular fricative (or the guttural R). In Portuguese, is becoming dominant in urban areas. There is also a realization as a , and the original pronunciation as an also remains very common in various dialects.

In Russian, is assimilated to the palatalization of the following velar consonant: лёгких . It also has a voiced allophone , which occurs before voiced obstruents. In Romanian, becomes the velar in word-final positions (duh 'spirit') and before consonants (hrean 'horseradish'). In Czech, the phoneme followed by a voiced obstruent can be realized as either or , e.g. abych byl .Kučera, H. (1961). The Phonology of Czech. s’ Gravenhage: Mouton & Co.

In Kyrgyz, the consonant phoneme has a uvular realisation () in back vowel contexts. In front-vowel environments, is fricativised between continuants to , and in back vowel environments both and fricativise to and respectively.Кызласов И. Л., Рунические письменности евразийских степей (Kyzlasov I.L. Runic scripts of Eurasian steppes), Восточная литература (Eastern Literature), Moscow, 1994, pp. 80 on, , with further bibliography. In Uyghur, the phoneme occurs with a back vowel. In the Mongolian language, is usually followed by .

The Tuu and Juu (Khoisan) languages of southern Africa have large numbers of guttural vowels. These sounds share certain phonological behaviors that warrant the use of a term specifically for them. There are scattered reports of pharyngeals elsewhere, such as in the Nilo-Saharan, Tama language.

In Swabian German, a pharyngeal approximant is an allophone of in nucleus and coda positions. In onsets, it is pronounced as a uvular approximant. In Danish, may have slight frication, and, according to , it may be a pharyngeal approximant . In Finnish, a weak pharyngeal fricative is the realization of after the vowels or in syllable-coda position, e.g. tähti 'star'.

Guttural sound

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