Voiceless uvular fricative
A voiceless uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is either a Latin or Greek-style chi,. The historical IPA symbol for this sound was, a turned small capital R, and was officially changed to in 1928. In Americanist phonetic notation the sound is represented by, or sometimes by . In broad transcription it may be transcribed, or if rhotic.
Features
Features of a voiceless uvular fricative:Fricative trill
Most languages claimed to have a voiceless uvular fricative may actually have a voiceless uvular fricative trill. Ladefoged & Maddieson note that there is "a complication in the case of uvular fricatives in that the shape of the vocal tract may be such that the uvula vibrates."Although they are not normally differentiated in studies, languages in which they have been have been found to specifically possess the fricative trill. The fricative-trill can be transcribed as in IPA. It is found as either the fortis counterpart of or the sole dorsal fricative in Northern SD and regional dialects and languages of the Netherlands spoken above the rivers Rhine, Meuse and Waal. A plain fricative that is articulated slightly further front, as either medio-velar or post-palatal is typical of dialects spoken south of the rivers, including Belgian SD. In those dialects, the voiceless uvular fricative trill is one of the possible realizations of the phoneme. See Hard and soft G in Dutch for more details.
The frication in the fricative trill variant sometimes occurs at the middle or the back of the soft palate, rather than the uvula itself. This is the case in Northern Standard Dutch as well as some varieties of Arabic, Limburgish and Madrid Spanish. It may thus be appropriate to call those variants voiceless velar-uvular fricative trill as the trill component is always uvular. The corresponding IPA symbol is . Thus, in cases where a dialectal variation between voiceless uvular and velar fricatives is claimed the main difference between the two may be the trilling of the uvula as frication can be velar in both cases - compare Northern Dutch acht 'eight' with Southern Dutch or, which features a non-trilled fricative articulated at the middle or front of the soft palate.
For a voiceless pre-uvular fricative, see voiceless velar fricative.