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Ejective consonants are a class of consonants which may contrast with aspirated or unaspirated consonants in a language.
Ejectives are voiceless consonants which are pronounced with simultaneous glottal closure. They are often described as sounding like "spat" consonants, but ejectivity is often quite weak; in some contexts, and depending upon the language they appear in, they may even sound like unaspirated consonants.
Technically speaking, ejectives are glottalic egressive sounds.
Language families which utilise ejective consonants include the Northwest, Northeast and South Caucasian families; the Athabaskan family; the Salishan family; the Afro-Asiatic family (notably Amharic and Hausa); and the Khoisan family.
The vast majority of ejective consonants noted in the world's languages are plosives or affricates. However, a very few languages utilise ejective fricatives as well; Ubykh (Northwest Caucasian) uses an ejective lateral fricative, the Upper Necaxa dialect of the Totonac language uses an ejective labiodental fricative, and Kabardian uses both of these in addition to ejective alveolopalatal and postalveolar fricatives. Tlingit uses ejective alveolar, lateral, velar, and uvular fricatives, and may be the only language to use the latter.
Ejectives are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis.
Ejectivefricatives are rare for presumably the same reason: with the air escaping from the mouth while the pressure is being raised, like inflating a leaky bicycle tire, it's harder to make the resulting sound as salient as a.
Among the scattered languages with ejectives elsewhere are Itelmen of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages and Yapese of the Austronesian family.
A few languages utilise ejectivefricatives: in some dialects of Hausa, the standard affricate [ts’] is a fricative [s’]; Ubykh (Northwest Caucasian) has an ejective lateral fricative; and Kabardian in addition to the lateral has ejective labiodental, alveolopalatal and postalveolar fricatives.
Tlingit is another extreme case, with ejective alveolar, lateral, velar, and uvular fricatives; it may be the only language with the latter.
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