Guttural
consonant pronounced in the throat
Guttural speech sounds are those with a primary place of articulation near the back of the oral cavity, where it is difficult to distinguish a sound's place of articulation and its phonation. In popular usage it is an imprecise term for sounds produced relatively far back in the vocal tract, such as the German ch or the Arabic ayin, but not simple glottal sounds like h. The term 'guttural language' is used for languages that have such sounds.
As a technical term used by phoneticians and phonologists, guttural has had various definitions. The concept always includes pharyngeal consonants, but may include velar, uvular or laryngeal consonants as well.
Guttural sounds are typically consonants, but murmured, pharyngealized, glottalized and strident vowels may also be considered guttural in nature.
Some phonologists argue that all post-velar sounds constitute a natural class.
Meaning and etymology
The word guttural literally means 'of the throat' (from Latin guttur, meaning throat), and was first used by phoneticians to describe the Hebrew glottal [ʔ] (א) and [h] (ה), uvular [χ] (ח), and pharyngeal [ʕ] (ע).
The term is commonly used non-technically by English speakers, especially in America, to refer to sounds that subjectively appear harsh or grating. This definition usually includes a number of consonants that are not used in American English, such as epiglottal [ʜ] and [ʡ], uvular [χ], [ʁ] and [q], and velar fricatives [x] and [ɣ].
“Guttural” enters the record as consonant pronounced in the throat. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Guttural, consonant and pronounced can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Guttural” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.