ʁ vs ħ

Voiced Uvular Fricative vs Voiceless Uvular Fricative

How these sounds differ

Voiced Uvular Fricative

Voicing: voiced
Place: uvular
Manner: fricative
Class: consonant
In languages: 27 / 500

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Voiceless Uvular Fricative

Voicing: voiceless
Place: uvular
Manner: fricative
Class: consonant
In languages: 24 / 500

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Cross-linguistic distribution

Languages with ʁ

Languages with both

Languages with ħ

7 languages in our database contrast both sounds as distinct phonemes. Languages that have one but not the other tend to merge them into a single phoneme — meaning speakers of those languages often struggle to hear the distinction when learning a language that contrasts them.

Has ʁ, not ħ (20)

ORMURI Indo-European Inuit Eskimo-Aleut Pashto Indo-European North Azerbaijani Turkic Tundra Yukaghir Yukaghir Gilyak Nivkh AHTNA Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit Avar Nakh-Daghestanian Abipon Guaicuruan YUPIK Eskimo-Aleut Aleut Eskimo-Aleut Hindi-Urdu Indo-European Portuguese (European) Indo-European Uyghur Turkic Modern Hebrew Afro-Asiatic Bukharan Tajik Indo-European Tatar Turkic Tashlhiyt Berber Afro-Asiatic Georgian Kartvelian Bashkir Turkic

Has ħ, not ʁ (17)

SOCOTRI Afro-Asiatic Nootka Wakashan Kwakiutl Wakashan Iraqw Afro-Asiatic Maltese Afro-Asiatic BRAO Austroasiatic DAHALO Afro-Asiatic KURDISH Indo-European Lak Nakh-Daghestanian Atayal Austronesian Arabic Afro-Asiatic Somali Afro-Asiatic Tigrinya Afro-Asiatic Kurdish Indo-European Ewe Atlantic-Congo Tamazight Berber Afro-Asiatic Tigre Afro-Asiatic