voiced glottal fricative

A voiced glottal fricative, sometimes called a breathy-voiced glottal transition, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages. It is used by some English-speakers as the "h" sound in "ahead". The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɦ⟩.

A [ɦ] sound may have real glottal constriction in a number of languages (such as Finnish), making it a true fricative. However, in most languages that have it, it only patterns like a fricative or approximant phonologically, and lacks the usual phonetic characteristics of a consonant. In such languages, [ɦ] has no inherent place or manner of articulation. Thus it has been described as a breathy-voiced counterpart of the following vowel from a phonetic point of view. However, its characteristics are also influenced by the preceding vowels and whatever other sounds surround it. Therefore, it can be described as a segment whose only consistent feature is its breathy voice phonation in such languages.