Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvular consonants are less comman than velars. They may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead.

The uvular consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA	Description	Example
IPA	Description	Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
	uvular nasal	Japanese	日本 Nihon	[ɲi.hoɴ]	Japan
	voiceless uvular plosive	Mishnaic Hebrew	קוף qôph	[qoːɸ]	The letter qoph
	voiced uvular plosive
	voiceless uvular fricative
	voiced uvular fricative	Parisian French	Paris	[pa.ˈʁi]	Paris
	uvular trill
	uvular ejective
	voiced uvular implosive

There are no uvular consonants in English. Uvular consonants are found in many African and Middle-Eastern languages, most notably Arabic, and in Native American languages. In parts of the Caucasus mountains and northwestern North America, nearly every language has uvular stops and fricatives. The Uvular R is also found in both French and German.

The voiceless uvular plosive is expressed as [q] in most transliteration schemes, including the IPA and SAMPA, and is pronounced similarly to the voiceless velar plosive [k], but with the middle of one's tongue against the soft uvula rather than the velum. The most familiar use will doubtless be in the transliteration of Arabic place names to English (such as Qatar and Iraq), though, since English lacks this phoneme, most English speakers pronounce the sound as the nearest equivalent, [k].

[ɢ], the voiced equivalent of [q], is much rarer. It sounds like the voiced velar plosive [g] articulated in the same uvular position as [q]. No widely-used language uses this sound, except some varieties of Persian.

The Tlingit language of the Alaskan Panhandle has ten uvular consonants:

tenuis plosive	qákʷ	tree spine
aspirated plosive	qʰákʷ	basket
ejective stop	qʼakʷ	screech owl
labialized tenuis plosive	náaqʷ	octopus
labialized aspirated plosive	qʷʰáan	people, tribe
labialized ejective stop	qʷʼátɬ	cooking pot
voiceless fricative	χaakʷ	fingernail
ejective fricative	χʼáakʷ	freshwater sockeye salmon
labialized voiceless fricative	χʷastáa	canvas, denim
labialized ejective fricative	χʷʼáaɬʼ	down (feathers)

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The Three Uvular Rs

The uvular trill [ʀ] is used in Parisian French and certain dialects of Arabic for the letter <r>.

The unvoiced uvular fricative [χ] is also exceedingly rare. It sounds similar to the voiceless velar fricative [x] (spelled <j> in Peninsular Spanish, <ch> in German, Dutch or Scots, <х> in Russian, and <χ> in Greek), except that it is articulated on the uvula. Though not a phoneme in French, it is an allophone of [ʁ] in non-Parisian French when it follows one of the voiceless stops [p], [t], or [k], as in maître [mɛtχ], where it is represented by <r>.

The voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] is much more common in northern Europe: it is found in many French dialects as the usual value of the letter R. Portuguese uses it as a trill. It also occurs in several Germanic languages to varying extents. Modern Israeli Hebrew also use the voiced uvular fricative as an r.

See Uvular R for more examples of uvular sounds represented by <r>.

Several other languages, including Inuktitut and some varieties of Arabic, have a voiced uvular fricative but do not treat it as an r.

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