Voiceless palatal implosive

IPA Unicode 0x0188

Voiceless palatal implosive is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that represents this sound is ⟨ʄ̊⟩, a combination of the letter for the voiced palatal implosive (⟨ʄ⟩) with a diacritic indicating voicelessness. However, it's important to note that the voiceless palatal implosive does not have a dedicated symbol in the IPA, and the description here is a theoretical approximation.

Characteristics

An implosive consonant is produced by inhaling air rather than exhaling it. The voiceless palatal implosive involves the body of the tongue approaching or touching the hard palate, creating a closure in the oral cavity that stops the airflow. Then, by lowering the glottis and simultaneously releasing the closure at the palate, the speaker creates a rarefaction that causes air to rush into the mouth, producing the implosive sound. The voiceless aspect means that the vocal cords do not vibrate during the production of the sound.

Occurrence

The voiceless palatal implosive is extremely rare among the world's languages. It might be theorized to exist based on the phonetic possibilities of human speech production and the presence of both voiced implosives and voiceless implosives in various languages, but specific languages that employ this sound are not well-documented in the phonetic literature. This rarity is likely due to the complex coordination required to produce a voiceless implosive sound, combined with the limited functional load such sounds would carry in distinguishing meaning in language.

See also

• Implosive consonant
• Voiceless consonant
• Palatal consonant