Glottal stop (letter)

Glottal stops

The sign ⟨ʔ⟩ is called "glottal stop," and it is a letter in some extended Latin alphabets of several languages of Canada. It is not part of the basic Latin alphabet or Classical Latin alphabet. Several phonetic transcription schemes, such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), use versions of glottal stop.

Significance

It typically represents a glottal stop sound.

Similar letters

Road sign in British Columbia showing the use of 7 to represent /ʔ/ in the Squamish language.

Since ⟨ʔ⟩ is not in the basic Latin alphabet, typing it can be inconvenient or impossible. Where ⟨ʔ⟩ is not available, it is sometimes replaced by a question mark ⟨?⟩, which is also its official representation in the transcription scheme, SAMPA. In Skwomesh or Squamish, the character may be replaced by the number ⟨7⟩.

Other likely replacements are signs similar to ⟨'⟩ (apostrophe), since they represent glottal stops in other orthographies, such as the sign ʻ (ʻokina) in Hawaiian.

In Unicode, uppercase Latin glottal stop and IPA glottal stop are two different characters (respectively): ⟨Ɂ⟩ and ⟨ʔ⟩. The first is slightly wider than the second. Lowercase and superscript versions are also distinguished:⟨ɂ⟩ ⟨ˀ⟩.

In phonetic transcription as well as in several languages, a single, tall glyph is used in all situations, with no distinction between uppercase and lowercase. However, in the Chipewyan, Dogrib, and Slavey languages, the tall version is only used for the uppercase, and a short version is used for the lowercase.

Usage

Technical transcription

• Americanist phonetic notation and the International Phonetic Alphabet — either ˀ or ʔ.
• Transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages — occasionally ʔ.
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet — ˀ only.

Vernacular orthographies

• Languages of Canada
  • Chipewyan — both Ɂ and ɂ.
  • Dogrib — both Ɂ and ɂ.
  • Kootenai — ʔ only.
  • Musqueam language — ʔ only.
  • Nootka — ʔ only.
  • Slavey — both Ɂ and ɂ.
  • Nitinaht — ʔ only.
  • Thompson — ʔ only.
  • Lushootseed
  • Squamish language, where it is usually represented as ⟨7⟩.
• Romanization of Hebrew
  • Biblical — both Ɂ and ɂ. Diaeresis used in Modern Hebrew

Computing codes

In Unicode 1.0, only the tall version and superscript version were included. In version 4.1 (2005), an uppercase character was added, and the existing tall glottal stop was redefined as its lowercase. Finally, in version 5.0 (2006) it was decided to separate the cased and caseless usages, assigning separate characters to each. The IPA character is first from left, while the extended Latin alphabet character is third from left. ^[1]

Character	ʔ		ˀ		Ɂ		ɂ
Unicode name	LATIN LETTER GLOTTAL STOP		MODIFIER LETTER GLOTTAL STOP		LATIN CAPITAL LETTER GLOTTAL STOP		LATIN SMALL LETTER GLOTTAL STOP
Character encoding	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	660	0294	704	02C0	577	0241	578	0242
UTF-8	202 148	CA 94	203 128	CB 80	201 129	C9 81	201 130	C9 82
Numeric character reference	ʔ	ʔ	ˀ	ˀ	Ɂ	Ɂ	ɂ	ɂ

See also

• ʾ
• ʕ
• ʡ
• ʢ
• ʖ
• ƾ
• ʻOkina
• Aleph
• Apostrophe
• Hamza
• Saltillo (letter)
• Sokuon
• Spiritus lenis

References

1. "Proposal to add LATIN SMALL LETTER GLOTTAL STOP to the UCS" (PDF). 2005-08-10. Retrieved 2013-11-04.