A voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some modern dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English, for example in loch, broch, and saugh (willow).

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , the Latin letter x. It is also used in broad transcription instead of the symbol , the Greek chi, for the voiceless uvular fricative.

For a voiceless pre-velar fricative (also called post-palatal), see .

Features

Features of a voiceless velar fricative:

Occurrence A voiceless velar fricative and its labialized variety are 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 "horn" and "what" became Proto-Germanic *hurnan and *hwat, where *h and *hw were likely and . This sound change is part of Grimm's law.

In Modern Greek, a voiceless velar fricative originated from the Ancient Greek voiceless aspirated stop in a sound change that lenited all Greek aspirated stops to fricatives.

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Abaza / xzë 'name' Adyghe / xë 'six' Afrikaans 'big' More often realized as uvular [ ~ ]. See Afrikaans phonology Albanian 'language' Allophone of . See Albanian phonology Aleut Atkan dialect 'two' Arabic Modern Standard 'green' (f.) May be velar, post-velar or uvular, depending on dialect. See Arabic phonology Assamese / oxomia 'Assamese' Assyrian ܚܡܫܐ / 'five' Avar / 'belly' Azerbaijani / / 'pleasant' Basque Some speakers 'to eat' Either velar or post-velar. For other speakers it's . Blackfoot / 'my grandparents' Sometimes /x/ becomes allophone /h/ in beginning of words like "hánnia!" ("really!") Or becomes allphone /ç/ after i/ii like ihkitsika seven. Brahui / xan 'eye' Corresponds to in Kurukh and in Malto. Breton 'our dog' Bulgarian / 'quietly' Described as having "only slight friction" (). Catalan 'kharja' Found in loanwords and interjections. See Catalan phonology Chechen / 'time' Chinese Mandarin / 'river' See Standard Chinese phonology Czech 'a Czech' See Czech phonology Danish Southern Jutlandic [ˈkʰaːx] 'cake' See Sønderjysk dialect Dutch Standard Belgian 'deny' May be post-palatal instead. In dialects spoken above the rivers Rhine, Meuse and Waal the corresponding sound is a postvelar-uvular fricative trill . See Dutch phonology and Hard and soft G in Dutch Southern Netherlands accents English Scottish loch 'loch' Younger speakers may merge this sound with . See Scottish English phonology Irish lough 'lough' Occurs only in Gaelic borrowings. See Irish English phonology Scouse book 'book' A syllable-final allophone of (lenition). Esperanto 'monk' See Esperanto phonology Estonian 'yes' Allophone of . See Estonian phonology Eyak 'traps' Finnish 'coffee' Allophone of . See Finnish phonology French 'jota' Occurs only in loanwords (from Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, etc.). See French phonology Georgian / 'stick' German 'book' See Standard German phonology Greek / 'art' See Modern Greek phonology Hebrew Biblical / 'Michael' See Biblical Hebrew phonologySephardic Hindustani Hindi / xuśī'happiness' Occurs only in loanwords. May be replaced in Hindi with . Can be retracted. See Hindustani phonology Urdu / xuśī Hungarian 'with a shah' See Hungarian phonology Icelandic 'October' See Icelandic phonology Indonesian 'typical' Occurs in Arabic loanwords. Often pronounced as [h] or [k] by some Indonesians. See Indonesian phonology Irish 'drink' See Irish phonology Japanese / 'Mach' Allophone of . See Japanese phonology Kabardian / khy 'sea' Karen S'gaw Karen 'beautiful; very attractive' Eastern Pwo 'mushroom, fungus' Western Pwo 'marian fruit' Kashmiri 'donkey' Kazakh ханзада / 'prince' Korean / 'bargaining' Allophone of before . See Korean phonology Kurdish 'house' See Kurdish phonology Kurukh कुँड़ुख़/kũṛux 'Kurukh' Corresponds to /x/ in Brahui and /q/ in Malto. Limburgish 'air' The example word is from the Maastrichtian dialect. See Maastrichtian dialect phonology and Hard and soft G in DutchLishan DidanUrmi dialect / 'milk'Generally post-velar Lithuanian 'choir' Occurs only in loanwords (usually international words) Lojban 'letter' Macedonian / 'Ohrid' See Macedonian phonology Malay / 'last', 'end' Occurs in Arabic loanwords. Often pronounced as or . See Malay phonology khidmat 'service' Allophone of . See Malay phonology Manx 'easy' Munseenaxk'hand'Nepali / ā̃khā'eye'Allophone of . See Nepali phonology Norwegian Urban East 'hate' Possible allophone of near back vowels; can be voiced between two voiced sounds. See Norwegian phonology Pashto / axta 'occupied' See Pashto phonology Persian Dari / 'daughter' Realized as a distinct velar phoneme , contrasting with Iranian . Iranian / 'nail puller' Allophone of before velar consonants. See Persian phonology. Polish 'bread' Also (in great majority of dialects) represented orthographically by . See Polish phonology Portuguese Fluminense 'art' In free variation with , , and before voiceless consonants General Brazilian 'rose' Some dialects. An allophone of . See Portuguese phonology Punjabi Gurmukhi / xabar 'news'Less frequent and may merge with in Gurmukhi varieties. Shahmukhi / xabar Romanian 'patronal feast of a church' Allophone of . See Romanian phonology Russian / 'good' See Russian phonology Scottish GaelicOftedal, M. (1956) The Gaelic of Leurbost. Oslo. Norsk Tidskrift for Sprogvidenskap. 'bridge' See Scottish Gaelic phonology Serbo-Croatian / 'oak' See Serbo-Croatian phonology Slovak 'guy' SloveneStandard'greed'See Slovene phonologySome dialects'god'Allophone of before voiceless obstruents or pause. See Slovene phonology Somali 'ink' Also occurs allophone of /q/ in Arabic loan words. See Somali phonology Spanish Latin American 'eye' May be glottal instead; in northern and central Spain it is often post-velar, cited in or uvular /χ/. See Spanish phonology Southern Spain Swedish Southern dialects 'lake' See Swedish phonology Sylheti / xobor 'news' Tachelhitixf'head' Tagalog 'why' Allophone of in intervocalic positions. See Tagalog phonologyTamilBrahmin Tamil, Sri Lankan Tamil (non-standard)பகை/pakai'hate'Intervocalic singular has debuccalized for most except in Brahmin and Sri Lankan Tamil. In total it can be [kʰ x ɡ ɣ ɣʰ h] Toda 'smoke' Turkish 'linden' Allophone of . See Turkish phonology Turkmen 'cunning' (noun) Tyap 'calabash', 'prostitute' Xhosa 'to cancel' Ukrainian / 'boy' See Ukrainian phonology Unami skixkwe 'young woman' Uzbek 'last' Post-velar. Occurs in environments different from word-initially and pre-consonantally, otherwise it is pre-velar. Vietnamese 'no', 'not', 'zero' See Vietnamese phonology Yaghan 'here' Yi / 'good' Zapotec Tilquiapan 'better' Used primarily in loanwords from Spanish

See also Guttural Index of phonetics articles

Notes

References

External links