Today, I’d like to talk about a sound that most English speakers don’t notice even though we use it every day: The Glottal Stop
The Glottal Stop is a unique consonant present in many languages around the world. It’s often represented as a lone ‘ (as in “Hawai’i”) or as a question mark (?), but its official IPA symbol looks like this:
What do Mittens and Hawaii have in common?
Let’s look at the name of the state of Hawaii. The “proper” (native) pronunciation of the state’s name is “huh-WHY-ee”, rather than “huh-WHY” or “huh-WHYYY”.
Say the correct version slowly. The sort of “catch” in your throat between the “WHY” and the “ee” is our phonetic phriend, the glottal stop. In the IPA, Hawaii is written as (/həwaɪʔi:/), with the glottal stop showing up in all its glory.
Sometimes, you’ll see Hawaii written with an apostrophe in the place of the glottal stop (“Hawai’i”) to show that, but really, the glottal stop is unmarked 90% of the time in English.
Another place where the glottal stop makes an appearance in many dialects of English is in the words “mitten” or “button”. Say those words carefully, and you’ll notice that where we have a “tt”, there’s actually a glottal stop, not any sort of T sound. In the IPA, when I pronounce these words, they’re transcribed as /mɪʔn/ and /bʌʔn/ (with the n’s as their own syllables). Contrast this with “bitter” (which is actually an alveolar tap, not a t) or “mitts” (which has a true t), and you’ll see through the English writing system’s weave of deception.
You’ll also find this sound in expressions like “Uh-oh” and between many words (“new attack”). The glottal stop will also show up from time to time in English phrases replacing a t if you’re listening closely.
Whatcha gonna do with all those glottal stops, all those glottal stops inside your speech?
I’m mildly ashamed to use this as an example, but in the Black Eyed Peas song “My Humps”, the chorus is filled with glottal stops. I’ll transcribe (broadly) a bit of the chorus (from 00:13 in the above video on) below:
Look at that transcription and try to note the different glottal stops in the singers speech. They’re going to make make make you surprised, make you surprised at how many glottal stops are in our everyday speech.
What’s our throat catching, anyways?
Take a look at this picture of the human vocal folds (courtesy of Wikipedia):
Our glottis (the phonetic term for the vocal folds/vocal cords) is composed of two pieces of tissue that move together and apart during speech, and vibrate rapidly to create voicing. Those pieces of tissue can be moved a great deal, and even brought all the way together.
Hold your breath with your mouth and nose opened. You’ll feel a pressure build up below your throat, and you’ll probably be able to feel exactly where the air is stopped. That closure is the vocal folds, and what you’re doing now is holding a glottal stop. In order to make a glottal stop in speech, we just pull those two pieces of tissue all the way together until they make a seal, and then release it again. That’s it. No tongue, no voicing, no nasal worries. Just close the glottis. Easy, huh?
Glottal stops in other languages
Glottal stops are common in English, but they’re not really phonemic (meaning that they don’t generally contrast with other sounds). If I say “mitten” using a full on T, people will understand you, but just think you’re strange. They’re even more common in British English, and in some Cockney dialects, they’re really omnipresent (“then, la’er, my dau’er ‘it me”).
However, in other languages, they can carry a very distinct contrast. In Hawai’ian and Samoan, they’re phonemic, and can show up anywhere. /ʔika/ and /ika/ miɡht be entirely different words even though speakers of many languages can’t tell the difference. No matter how I’ve tried, I still can’t quite hear this difference. English speakers love our word-initial glottal stops (at the beginning of words), so I hear them most of the time, and have trouble starting a word without them.
Similarly, there are other languages where /kaʔ/ and /ka/ would be completely different. Once again, English speakers (and speakers of many other Indo-european languages) have lots of trouble with this contrast.
Reader, meet Glottal Stop
So, now that you know it’s out there, I suspect you’ll be hearing glottal stops in lots of places. Once you do, you and the glottal stop will certainly become phast phonetic phriends.
Tagged with Phonetic Phriends, Phonetics and Phonology | 11 Comments
Comments
Leave a Comment
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
Site Information
Search all posts
Tags
- Computers and Software (12)
- Conventional Linguistics (95)
- Computational Linguistics (4)
- Dialects and Idiolects (6)
- Etymology (2)
- Language Acquisition (4)
- Language Change (8)
- Linguistic Anthropology (4)
- Phonetic Phriends (3)
- Phonetics and Phonology (20)
- Psycholinguistics (4)
- Sociolinguistics (22)
- Translation and Translation Theory (10)
- Words, Phrases, and Idioms (27)
- Language and Thought (10)
- Language Censorship (3)
- Language Creation (6)
- Language Humor (25)
- Language Usage (76)
- Linguistic Mysticism (10)
- Notes (47)
- Reader Questions (2)
- Recommended Links (1)
Language Sites and Blogs
Linguistics and Language Resources
Links for Corrections
Unrelated-yet-awesome
Archives
- June 2010
- March 2010
- September 2009
- March 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
Site features
- Entries RSS
- Comments RSS
- Powered by Wordpress
- Theme based on Vertigo Squared.
- Hosting by Joyent
Hi Will (thats what my feed reader tells me),
there’s more interesting news to the glottal stop in other languages. Arabic for example. In Arabic poetry the glottal stop (called Hamza) counts as a full consonant. Now this is really weird and nobody can really tell my why that is (aside from the Hamza having its own letter).
Here in Germany students of English in University learn about the British use of the gs and get almost into spasmic fits to pronounce it in words like “butter”. The funny thing is that German is full of glottal stops without us ever recognising it. “Ab’artig”, is one example and nobody is having trouble with this.
Keep writing, I like this Blog, even though I just stubled across it in one of the TxD forums.
Bernd.
Dunno about other English speakers, but I’m pretty sure I pronounce Hawaii [həwɑ:ji] – no glottal stop there.
Lameen,
You’re quite right, many English speakers pronounce it with just a glide and no glottal stop. According to a Hawaiian friend, generally, one can tell a ‘local’ from a tourist by how they pronounce ‘Hawai’i’. A local will often use the glottal stop, and a tourist usually won’t. Perhaps it’s not the most universal example of glottal stop use outside of Hawai’i, but I still think it’s worth knowing about.
Since I am in Hawaii…true natives (which I can never be of course) use the glottal stop in Hawai’i (and also pronounce the ‘w’ as ‘v’)and it is used quite often in the native tongue in many words. I drive around reading the street signs aloud so that I can fit in as best as I possibly can.
Reading this made me realize the Cockney accent is a treasure trove of glottal stops.
Hi,
I think the default pronunciation of “mitten” and “button” does not involve a glottal stop, but either a ‘t’ sound followed by a shwa (no syllabic /n/), or a ‘t’ with nasal release (and syllabic /n/). Of course it is also possible to pronounce them with a glottal stop (and syllabic /n/).
Slawek
i was wondering of ‘hour’ begins with a glottal stop? If it does, how then is it transcribed?
The glottal stop most familiar to me in English is the pronunciation of hard “G” at the end or sometimes in the middle of a word using “ng”, such as “sing”, “bring”.
It seems to be a characteristic of first generation Jewish persons, and I always assumed it had to do with a carryover, possibly from Yiddish.
But I have a schooltime friend who is a first generation Italian, a lifetime resident of New York City, Now that I see her infrequently, I am aware of her pronounced use of the same glottal stop. Would that be an acquired use , resulting from surrounding speakers? I have never noticed it in orhers of Italian parents.
Hi there
This website has help me a lot to understand how glottal stops appear in speech thank you with helping me with my degree….
[...] of Grammatical errors – im in ur programmz, codin in ur dialect: LOLCode and Feline Dialectology – The glottal stop: your new Phonetic Phriend – You can’t say “Phonetics” quickly without saying “fun” – You can lead a horse to water [...]
Thanks for your post, I understand now! I’m doing an assignment for an intro course and looked stuff up, and your site about glottal stops came up.
Yay! This is so wonderful. As a former BA student, not currently in school, it makes me so happy to see this sort of thing. I get all warm and fuzzy inside thinking about my days in Phonetics class, learning about glottal stops, ejectives, lateral fricatives.. ah yes. Keep on writing this stuff! It’s awesome.