The glottal stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or ʻokina in Hawaiʻi among those using a preservative pronunciation of that name.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʔ⟩. It is called the glottal stop because the technical term for the gap between the vocal folds, which is closed up in the production of this sound, is the glottis.
Read more about Glottal Stop: Phonetic and Phonological Features, Phonology and Symbolization of The Glottal Stop in Selected Languages, Occurrence
Famous quotes containing the word stop:
“We laugh at him who steps out of his room at the very moment when the sun steps out, and says: “I will the sun to rise”; and at him who cannot stop the wheel, and says: “I will it to roll”; and at him who is taken down in a wrestling match, and says: “I lie here, but I will that I lie here!” And yet, all laughter aside, do we ever do anything other than one of these three things when we use the expression, “I will”?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)