Glottal consonant
consonant produced using the glottis as the primary articulation
A glottal consonant is a sound made using only the glottis. English has three glottal consonants, [h], as in hat, [ʔ], as in uh-oh, and [ɦ], as in uh-huh.
The International Phonetic Alphabet has symbols for three glottal consonants:
- [ʔ] - the glottal stop
- [h] - the voiceless glottal fricative
- [ɦ] - the voiced glottal fricative
[h] and [ɦ] often are not true fricatives, and are more similar to voiceless vowels.
