The voiced pharyngeal approximant or fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages.

Although traditionally placed in the fricative row of the IPA chart, [ʕ] is usually an approximant.

The IPA symbol itself is ambiguous, but no language is known to make a phonemic distinction between fricatives and approximants at this place of articulation.

Many languages that have been described as having pharyngeal fricatives or approximants turn out on closer inspection to have epiglottal consonants instead.

For example, the candidate /ʕ/ sound in Arabic and standard Hebrew (not modern Hebrew – Israelis generally pronounce this as a glottal stop) has been variously described as a voiced epiglottal fricative [ʢ], an epiglottal approximant [ʕ̞],[1] or a pharyngealized glottal stop [ʔˤ].