Uvularization

Uvularization or uvularisation is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the back of the tongue is constricted toward the uvula and upper pharynx during the articulation of a sound with its primary articulation elsewhere.

In Arabic and several other Semitic and Berber languages, uvularization is the defining characteristic of the series of "emphatic" coronal consonants.

[1][2] Uvularized consonants in standard Arabic are /sʶ/, /dʶ/, /tʶ/, /ðʶ/, /lʶ/.

Other consonants, and vowels, may be phonetically uvularized.

In Greenlandic, long vowels are uvularized before uvular consonants,[3] and English speakers retaining the Northumbrian Burr are reported both to uvularize and to retract vowels before a rhotic.