Glottal consonant

A glottal consonant is a sound made using only the glottis. English has two glottal consonants, [h], as in hat and [ʔ], as in uh-oh.

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.