[3] The word guttural literally means 'of the throat' (from Latin guttur, meaning throat), and was first used by phoneticians to describe the Hebrew glottal [ʔ] (א) and [h] (ה), uvular [χ] (ח), and pharyngeal [ʕ] (ע).
[4] The term is commonly used non-technically by English speakers to refer to sounds that subjectively appear harsh or grating.
This definition usually includes a number of consonants that are not used in English, such as epiglottal [ʜ] and [ʡ], uvular [χ], [ʁ] and [q], and velar fricatives [x] and [ɣ].
[7] Languages that extensively use [x], [χ], [ʁ], [ɣ] and/or [q] include: In addition to their usage of [q], [x], [χ], [ʁ] and [ɣ], these languages also have the pharyngeal consonants of [ʕ] and [ħ]: In French, the only truly guttural sound is (usually) a uvular fricative (or the guttural R).
[45] The Tuu and Juu (Khoisan) languages of southern Africa have large numbers of guttural vowels.
[47] In Finnish, a weak pharyngeal fricative is the realization of /h/ after the vowels /ɑ/ or /æ/ in syllable-coda position, e.g. tähti [tæħti] 'star'.