Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Most uvular consonants are either stops or fricatives, but a very small number of languages use them as nasals, trills, or approximants.
The uvular consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
There are no uvular consonants in English. Uvular consonants are found in many African and Middle-Eastern languages, most notably Arabic, and in Native American languages. The Uvular R is also found in both French and German.
The voiceless uvular plosive is expressed as [q] in most transliteration schemes, including the IPA and SAMPA, and is pronounced similarly to the voiceless velar plosive [k], but with the middle of one's tongue against the soft uvula rather than the velum. The most familiar use will doubtless be in the transliteration of Arabic place names to English (such as Qatar and Iraq), though, since English lacks this phoneme, most English speakers pronounce the sound as the nearest equivalent, [k].
[ɢ], the voiced equivalent of [q], is much rarer. It sounds like the voiced velar plosive [g] articulated in the same uvular position as [q]. No widely-used language uses this sound, except some varieties of Persian.
The Three Uvular Rs
The uvular trill [ʀ] is used in Parisian French and certain dialects of Arabic for the letter <r>.
The unvoiced uvular fricative [χ] is also exceedingly rare. It sounds similar to the voiceless velar fricative [x] (spelled <j> in Peninsular Spanish, <ch> in German or Scots, <х> in Russian, and <χ> in Greek), except that it is articulated on the uvula. Though not a phoneme in French, it is an allophone of [ʁ] in non-Parisian French when it follows one of the voiceless stops [p], [t], or [k], as in maître [mɛtχ], where it is represented by <r>.
The voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] is much more common in northern Europe: it is found in many French dialects as the usual value of the letter R. Portuguese uses it as a trill. It also occurs in several Germanic languages to varying extents. Modern Israeli Hebrew also use the voiced uvular fricative as an r.
See Uvular R for more examples of uvular sounds represented by <r>.
Several other languages, including Inuktitut and some varieties of Arabic, have a voiced uvular fricative but do not treat it as an r.
See also
