The Arabic letter Hamza. I hear it often at work but I don’t understand what a glottal stop is
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Discussing the nature of any particular Arabic letter is very difficult because of the wide variety of dialects and lack of standardization of spoken Arabic (let’s not even get started with ﻉ).
But let’s talk glottal stop – a sound you’ve almost certainly been making your whole life if you’re a native English speaker, just without necessarily realizing it. A glottal stop is, as you might expect, a sudden stoppage of the air flowing through the glottis – basically, you shut down your vocal cords for a moment. Though arguments can be made that it should be its own thing, it mostly functions like a consonant.
When most speakers of North American and British (and other?) dialects of English say the word “kitten”, they don’t actually pronounce the t’s. You don’t say “kit-ten” most of the time; instead, you say “ki-“, then you make some sort of weird non-noise, and then you say “-en”. This can happen in other spots with double t’s as well, like “button” or “better”. Some dialects of English will do it to single t’s with vowels to either side like in “city”, or even to a t at the end of a word like “cat”. Notice that this is all happening with t, which is the most likely spot for this in English ([here’s a Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-glottalization)). This phenomenon is more common when speaking quickly.
Listen to how some British people pronounce the word “bottle.” They leave the t’s out and put in a little swallowing sound, so it sounds like “bo’uhl.” That’s the closest/simplest explanation I can think of offhand. Good luck with your studies!
It’s the thing in-between the syllables of “uh-oh.” Rather than the u sound flowing into the o sound, there’s a hard break (hence “stop”), and then the o commences. If you focus on your mouth while you say the word, you’ll notice your tongue moving back and some weird air flows around throat, which are difficult to describe but you’ll definitely know them.
Technically there’s a second glottal stop at the beginning of “uh-oh” as well, although it’s harder to hear. Other languages, like Arabic and Hawaiian, treat this sound as a full-blown letter, but in English it’s just kind of a vocal artifact that happens sometimes.
Some English accents also replace the letter T with glottal stops. I think Cockney does it. Imagine an extremely exaggerated London street thug saying the word “important”: it will sound like “impor’ant,” as the T gets replaced with a glottal stop.
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Try saying “ah-ah-ah-ah”—you notice how your throat is closing in between? That’s a glottal stop.
Butter being buh-uhr is another common one. Does it still count if you don’t quite say the single t in an already “gh” word like figh-uhr (fighter) or wrigh-in (writing)?
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That’s not a glottal stop. I think it’s a glottal fricative. It behaves like h in hand. Alif is a glottal stop.
Does English really not use glottal stops? Do people just pronounce vowels at the beginning of the words smoothly? Like how do you pronounce words like “our”, “umbrella”, “apple”?
This might help: say one of those words like bottle, but don’t touch your tongue to your teeth or the roof of your mouth. It’s a little self conscious to did that but it helps you understand the mouth shape for the sound.
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