Glottalization

Glottalization

Glottalization is a special way people shape sounds when they speak. It happens when the small space between the vocal cords, called the glottis, closes completely or partly while making another sound. This can change how vowels and soft sounds feel, often making them sound a bit creaky. When making harder consonant sounds, the glottis might close fully at the same time, almost like adding a small pause in the middle of the sound.

We can show glottalization in writing using special symbols. Most often, it is written with a tiny glottal stop symbol above the main letter. There are also other ways to write it, like using an apostrophe or a special tilde below the letter, depending on the sound. For example, in the language Yapese, the word for "sick" that has a glottalized m can be written in a couple of different ways using these symbols.

Types

Glottalization changes how we make sounds. It depends on three things: how much the glottis closes, when it closes, and the type of airflow it creates.

The closure can be light, like a creaky voice, or complete, like making a stop sound at the same time as another sound.

The timing can happen at the same time as the sound, or before or after it. This can create special sounds called ejectives or implosives. Sometimes it is hard to know if a language uses light ejective sounds or voiceless sounds with extra glottal closure.

Glottal replacement

See also: Debuccalization

Glottal replacement, also called glottaling, happens when a sound is fully replaced by a glottal stop [ʔ]. This is common in some British English dialects like Cockney and Estuary English. In these dialects, the glottal stop can replace the sounds /p/, /t/, and /k/ at the end of words or before an unstressed vowel. For example, "water" might sound like [ˈwɔːʔə], where the glottal stop takes the place of the "t" sound. Other words like "city," "bottle," "Britain," and "seniority" can also use this replacement.

Glottal replacement is found in other languages too. In Indonesian, the sound /k/ at the end of a syllable is often a glottal stop. In Gorontalic languages, the original sound *k turned into a glottal stop in many words. Hawaiian also uses the glottal stop, which came from older Polynesian sounds.

In Yaneshaʼ, vowels can have special glottalized forms, which add a creaky voice or a glottal stop to the sound.

Glottal reinforcement

Pre-glottalization, or glottal reinforcement, happens when a sound is made along with a special sound called a glottal stop.

This is common in some types of English, especially in words ending with certain sounds. For example, in words like "what" and "fiction," there is a small pause in the voice when the word ends.

Glottal reinforcement is also found in some types of Low Saxon, like in the area called Twents. It shows up before strong sounds in words and can change how the word sounds a little.

Main articles: Phonological history of English consonant clusters § Glottalization, T-glottalization, and Unreleased stop