A layman's term for a consonant or vowel sound articulated in the throat (uvular, pharyngeal, glottal); also a language containing gutturals in its inventory.
Arabic is considered one of the most guttural languages (that's not to say it's ugly, however; it can be quite sexy actually), as it has seven guttural consonants, commonly transliterated as q, kh, gh,
h-dot, reverse apostrophe, h and apostrophe (glottal
stop). Among European languages,
German and
Dutch have both ch (= kh), r (= gh) and h;
French also has a uvular r (= gh). Modern Greek has kh and gh, and Spanish has j (= kh).
The constructed language Klingon, from Star Trek, is intentionally very rough and guttural; it contains the sounds of Arabic kh, gh, q and glottal
stop, along with an affricate qkh.
