Glottal Stop

The letter for this sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet is ⟨ʔ⟩. The X-SAMPA symbol for this sound is ⟨?⟩. In English, this sound is found in a few accents. One example is the break in "uh-oh".

Features of the glottal stop:

• The place of articulation (where the sound is produced) is glottal. This means that this sound is produced at the vocal cords (vocal folds) and by the vocal cords.
• The manner of articulation (how the sound is produced) is stop, or plosive. This means that this sound is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. (The term plosive contrasts with nasal stops, where the blocked airflow is redirected through the nose.)
• It is an oral consonant. This means that air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• This sound is not produced with air flowing over the tongue. So, the central–lateral dichotomy is not suitable.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic. This means that this sound is produced by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.
• It has no phonation. This means that it is not a voiced or voiceless sound. This is because there is no air flow through the glottis when the sound is being made.

 

When many languages, such as Arabic, are Romanized (which means they are written with the Latin alphabet instead of their usual writing system), the glottal stop is written with the apostrophe ⟨ʼ⟩ or the symbol ʾ. This is where the IPA letter ⟨ʔ⟩ comes from. In many Polynesian languages that use the Latin alphabet, the glottal stop is written with a rotated apostrophe, ⟨ʻ⟩. This letter is called ‘okina in Hawaiian and Samoan. In Malay the glottal stop is written with the letter ⟨k⟩ (at the end of words). In Võro and Maltese, it is written with ⟨q⟩.

Other writing systems also have letters for the glottal stop. For example, the Hebrew alphabet uses the letter aleph ⟨א⟩. Cyrillic has the letter palochka ⟨Ӏ⟩. This letter is used in several Caucasian languages. Modern Latin alphabets for some Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus use the letter heng ('Ꜧ ꜧ'). In Tundra Nenets, it is written with the letters apostrophe ⟨ʼ⟩ and double apostrophe ⟨ˮ⟩. In Japanese, glottal stops occur at the end of interjections of surprise or anger and are written with ⟨っ⟩.

When most Philippine languages are written, the glottal stop is not written all the time. Usually, a word that begins with a vowel (for example, Tagalog aso, "dog") is always pronounced with a glottal stop before that vowel. (This also happens in Modern German and Hausa.) This glottal stop is not written. Some orthographies (or ways of writing words) use a hyphen instead of the reverse apostrophe if the glottal stop is in the middle of the word (e.g. Tagalog pag-ibig, "love"; or Visayan gabi-i, "night"). If it is at the end of a word, the last vowel is written with a circumflex accent (known as the pakupyâ) if the last vowel is stressed and there is a glottal stop in the final vowel (for example, basâ, "wet"). If the stress is on the penultimate, or second-to-last, syllable, then a grave accent (known as the paiwà) is used (for example, batà, "child").

Some Canadian indigenous languages, especially some of the Salishan languages, use the letter ʔ itself as part of their writing systems. In some of them, there are uppercase and lowercase letters for the glottal stop: Ɂ and ɂ. The number 7 or question mark is sometimes used instead of ʔ. Some languages, such as Squamish, use this instead of ʔ. SENĆOŦEN uses the comma ⟨,⟩ to write the glottal stop. However, this is optional in SENĆOŦEN.

In 2015, two women challenged the government of the Northwest Territories. They wanted to use the ʔ character in their daughters' names: Sahaiʔa, a Chipewyan name, and Sakaeʔah, a Slavey name. The government told them that the identity documents the government uses could not have the letter ʔ on them. Because of this, the women instead used hyphens in their daughters' names. After this, they continued to challenge the government.

In the Crow language, the glottal stop is written as a question mark: ?. The only time the glottal stop is used in Crow is as a question marker morpheme, at the end of a sentence. (A question marker makes a sentence into a question.)