Ingressive sound

True glottalic ingressives are quite rare and are called "voiceless implosives" or "reverse ejectives".

They may be found as phonemes, words, and entire phrases on all continents and in genetically-unrelated languages, most frequently in sounds for agreement and backchanneling.

A pulmonic ingressive phoneme was found in the ritual language Damin; its last speaker died in the 1990s.

Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996:268) state, "This ǃXóõ click is probably unique among the sounds of the world's languages that, even in the middle of a sentence, it may have ingressive pulmonic airflow."

In the extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet, ingressive sounds are indicated with ⟨↓⟩ so the Norwegian backchanneling particles ja and nei would be transcribed ⟨jɑː↓⟩ and ⟨næɪ↓⟩.

It sometimes occurs in rapid counting to maintain a steady airflow throughout a long series of unbroken sounds.

Japanese-speakers also use an ingressive bilateral bidental friction as a "pre-turn opening in conversation" or to begin a prayer.

Several languages include an affirmative "yeah", "yah", "yuh", or "yes" that is made with inhaled breath, which sounds something like a gasp.