Voiceless uvular implosive

A voiceless uvular implosive is a rare consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʛ̥  or qʼ↓. A dedicated IPA letter, ʠ, was withdrawn in 1993.

Voiceless uvular implosive
ʛ̥
ʠ
qʼ↓

Features

  • Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
  • It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
  • It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
  • The airstream mechanism is implosive (glottalic ingressive), which means it is produced by pulling air in by pumping the glottis downward. As it is voiceless, the glottis is completely closed, and there is no pulmonic airstream at all.

Occurrence

A voiceless uvular implosive has been claimed for several Mayan languages.

LanguageWordIPAMeaningNotes
Q'anjob'alQ'anjob'al[ʛ̥ anχoɓal]'Q'anjob'al language'
gollark: And being educated is also not the same as being intelligent.
gollark: Well, being intelligent doesn't protect you from doing immensely stupid things.
gollark: You *would* perhaps download a server, but *could* you? (probably not)
gollark: I'm not sure how you would actually do that.
gollark: Thank you for your useful* input.

See also

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