Voiced epiglottal fricative

A voiced epiglottal fricative, or voiced pharyngeal trill, is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʢ⟩.

Although the official name in the IPA for this sound has always been a voiced epiglottal fricative since it was introduced in 1989, laryngoscopic studies by John Esling have found that both epiglottal and pharyngeal consonants are pharyngeal in place of articulation, and are affected in manner by the aryepiglottic folds and larynx height; he therefore proposed the reclassification of ⟨ʢ⟩ as the trilled counterpart of ⟨ʕ⟩, noting both as ranging from fricatives to approximants, and later described realizations of ⟨ʢ⟩ ranging from a fricative, to a trill, to a fricative trill. Esling furthered this reclassification with a modified version of the IPA chart, merging pharyngeal and epiglottal consonants into a single column, placing ⟨ʢ⟩ as a trill, ⟨ʕ⟩ as a fricative, and ⟨ʕ̞⟩ as an approximant.

A voiced epiglottal approximant ⟨ʢ̞⟩ is reported in one study to occur in Dahalo, though the authors recognize that this is a precise description, and that the sound is still "pharyngeal in a broader sense", so that it may be describing the same sound as ⟨ʕ̞⟩.

Few languages distinguish between pharyngeal and epiglottal fricatives. However, according to Peter Ladefoged, the Aghul spoken in the village of Burkikhan, Dagestan has both a voiceless pharyngeal fricative and a voiceless epiglottal fricative.