pharyngealization

9.9

A way of making a speech sound by tightening the throat while you speak

noun
/fəˌrɪnˈdʒiːəlaɪˈzeɪʃən/

Specialized

: faríngealización

In Arabic, many consonants are pronounced with pharyngealization, which adds a distinct quality to the speech sounds.

Examples

Linguists observed that pharyngealization can change the meaning of words in some dialects.
The study focused on how pharyngealization affects the clarity of certain phonemes in various languages.
The ease with which such hyper-corrections occur in sound change must be partially due to what we might call the "dampening" effect of secondary articulations like palatalization, glottalization, or pharyngealization.

Academic text (2002)

Surface Forms

pharyngealization singular

pharyngealizations plural

Morphology

pharyngealization = pharyngeal (semi-transparent) = pharynx + eal + ization

This is a regular nominalization of the technical adjective 'pharyngeal', but the specialized phonetics meaning is not fully predictable for most learners.

Etymology

Pharyngealization comes from pharyngeal, which in turn comes from the Greek root pharynx meaning 'throat'. So, pharyngealization is a change in a speech sound made by using or tightening the throat, which is why it changes how a sound is pronounced.