Editing Voicelessness (section)

==Voiceless vowels and other sonorants==
[[Sonorant]]s are sounds such as vowels and [[nasal consonant|nasal]]s that are voiced in most of the world's languages. However, in some languages sonorants may be voiceless, usually [[allophone|allophonically]]. For example, the [[Japanese language|Japanese]] word ''[[sukiyaki]]'' is pronounced {{IPA|[sɯ̥kijaki]}} and may sound like {{IPA|[skijaki]}} to an English speaker, but the lips can be seen to compress for the {{IPA|[ɯ̥]}}. Something similar happens in [[English language|English]] words like ''p'''e'''culiar'' {{IPA|[pʰə̥ˈkj̊uːliɚ]}} and ''p'''o'''tato'' {{IPA|[pʰə̥ˈtʰeɪ̯ɾoʊ̯]}}.

Voiceless vowels are also an areal feature in languages of the [[American Southwest]] (like [[Hopi language|Hopi]] and [[Keresan languages|Keres]]), the [[Great Basin]] (including all [[Numic languages]]), and the [[Great Plains]], where they are present in Numic [[Comanche language|Comanche]] but also in [[Algonquian languages|Algonquian]] [[Cheyenne language|Cheyenne]], and the [[Caddoan languages|Caddoan]] language [[Arikara language|Arikara]]. It also occurs in [[Woleaian language|Woleaian]], in contrast to the other [[Micronesian languages]], which instead delete it outright.

Sonorants may also be contrastively, not just environmentally, voiceless. [[Standard Tibetan]], for example, has a voiceless {{IPA|/l̥/}} in ''[[Lhasa]]'', which sounds similar to but is less noisy than the [[voiceless alveolar lateral fricative|voiceless lateral fricative]] {{IPA|/ɬ/}} in [[Welsh language|Welsh]]; it contrasts with a modally voiced {{IPA|/l/}}. Welsh contrasts several voiceless sonorants: {{IPA|/m, m̥/}}, {{IPA|/n, n̥/}}, {{IPA|/ŋ, ŋ̊/}}, and {{IPA|/r, r̥/}}, the last represented by "rh".

In [[Moksha language|Moksha]], there is even a [[voiceless palatal approximant]] {{IPA|/j̊/}} (written in [[Cyrillic]] as {{angbr|[[й]][[х]]}} ''jh'') along with {{IPA|/l̥/}} and {{IPA|/r̥/}} (written as {{angbr|[[л]]х}} ''lh'' and {{angbr|[[р]]х}} ''rh''). The last two have palatalized counterparts {{IPA|/l̥ʲ/}} and {{IPA|/r̥ʲ/}} ({{angbr|л[[ь]]х}} and {{angbr|рьх}}). [[Kildin Sami language|Kildin Sami]] has also {{IPA|/j̊/}} {{angbr|[[ҋ]]}}.

Contrastively voiceless vowels have been reported several times without ever being verified (L&M 1996:315).