uvular consonant

Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead. Uvular affricates can certainly be made but are rare: they occur in most Turkic languages, most Persian languages, most Arabic languages, in some southern High-German dialects, as well as a few African and Native American languages. (Ejective uvular affricates occur as realizations of uvular stops in Kazakh, Bashkir, Arabic dialects, Lillooet, or as allophonic realizations of the ejective uvular fricative in Georgian.) Uvular consonants are typically incompatible with advanced tongue root, and they often cause retraction of neighboring vowels.

Uvular consonants in IPA