| Voiceless nasal glottal approximant | |
|---|---|
| h̃ |
Thevoiceless nasal glottal approximant is a type of consonantal sound, anasal approximant, used in some oral languages. The symbol in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨h̃⟩, that is, anh with atilde.
Theh sound is nasalized in several languages, apparently due to a connection between glottal and nasal sounds calledrhinoglottophilia. Examples of languages where the only h-like sound is nasalized areKrim,Lisu, andPirahã.
More rarely, a language will contrast oral/h/ and nasal/h̃/. Two such languages are neighboring Bantu languages of Angola and Namibia,Kwangali andMbukushu. In these languages, vowels following/h̃/ are nasalized, though nasal vowels do not occur elsewhere. A distinction is also reported fromWolaytta, though in that case the nasal is rare.Swazi distinguishes /h, h̃, ɦ, ɦ̃/.
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basque | Souletin dialect[1] | ahate | [ãˈh̃ãte] | 'duck' | |
| Carapana[2] | hʉ̃gẽ́ | [h̃ĩŋɛ̃́] | 'god' | Allophone of[h] before nasal vowels. | |
| Kaingang[3] | hũg | [h̃ũŋ] | 'hawk' | Possible word-initial realization of /h/ before a nasal vowel.[3] | |
| Kwangali[4] | nhonho | [h̃õh̃õ] | Tribulus species | ||
| Khoekhoegowab | Damara dialect | hû | [h̃ũː] | 'six' | Free variation[clarification needed] |
| Lisu | Northern dialect[5] | han | [h̃a˧] | 'soul' | |
| Southern dialect[6] | ꓦꓻ | [h̃ɑ˦] | |||
| Swazi | Distinguishes /h, h̃, ɦ, ɦ̃/. | ||||
| Tofa[7] | иъһён | [iʔh̃jon] | 'twenty' | ||
