Breathy voice
Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape, which produces a sighing-like sound. A simple breathy phonation, , can sometimes be heard as an allophone of English between vowels, such as in the word behind, for some speakers.
In the context of the Indo-Aryan languages like Sanskrit and Hindi and comparative Indo-European studies, breathy consonants are often called voiced aspirated, as in the Hindi and Sanskrit stops normally denoted bh, dh, ḍh, jh, and gh and the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European phonemes bʰ,dʰ,ǵʰ,gʰ,gʷʰ., as breathy voice is a different type of phonation from aspiration. However, breathy and aspirated stops are acoustically similar in that in both cases there is a delay in the onset of full voicing. In the history of several languages, like Greek and some varieties of Chinese, breathy stops have developed into aspirated stops.
Classification and terminology
The IPA uses the term "breathy voice", but VoQS uses the term "whispery voice". Both accept the term "murmur", popularised by Ladefoged.Transcription
A stop with breathy release or a breathy nasal is transcribed in the IPA as etc. or as etc. Breathy vowels are most often written etc. Indication of breathy voice by using subscript diaeresis was approved in or before June 1976 by members of the council of International Phonetic Association.In VoQS, the notation is used for whispery voice, and is used for breathy voice. Some authors, such as Laver, suggest the alternative transcription as the correct analysis of Gujarati, but it could be confused with the replacement of modal voicing in voiced segments with whispered phonation, conventionally transcribed with the diacritic.
Methods of production
The distinction between the latter two of these realizations, vocal folds somewhat separated along their length and vocal folds together with the arytenoids making an opening, is phonetically relevant in White Hmong.Phonological property
In some Bantu languages, historically breathy stops have been phonetically devoiced, but the four-way contrast in the system has been retained.In Portuguese, vowels after the stressed syllable can be pronounced with breathy voice.
Gujarati is unusual in contrasting breathy vowels and consonants: 'twelve', 'outside', 'burden'.
Tsumkwe Juǀʼhoan makes the following rare distinctions : fall, land ; walk; herb species; and /n|ʱoaᵑ/ greedy person; /n|oaʱᵑ/ cat.
Kurukh distinguishes /Ch, Cʰ, Cʰh/ with occasional minimal pairs like /dʱandha:/ "astonishment" and /dʱandʱa:/ "exertion". Clusters of voiced aspirates and /h/ are possible too as in /madʒʱhi:/ "middle" and /madʒʱis/ "zamindar's agent".