The voiced glottal fricative, sometimes called breathy-voiced glottal transition, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant phonologically, but often lacks the usual phonetic characteristics of a consonant.

Therefore, it can be described as a segment whose only consistent feature is its breathy voice phonation in such languages.

[1] It may have real glottal constriction in a number of languages (such as Finnish[2]), making it a fricative.

Northern Wu languages such as Shanghainese contrast the voiced and voiceless glottal fricatives.

Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible.