Hard-x (X̲)

Halq’eméylem Hard-x

X̲ is the Halq’eméylem ‘hard-x’ sound. You make this sound by creating heavy friction with the back of your tongue against your uvula (the thing that dangles at the back of your throat). Linguists call this sound a ‘uvular fricative’.

Examples

The audio file below contains examples of Elders saying words with this sound.

The words they are saying are x̲éyx̲eléx̲ (the -ing form of x̲éyléx̲ ̲– to go to war) and qéx̲ – much, a lot

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling, Elizabeth Phillips

Tips for making this sound

• First try saying a regular k sound a few times, and feel where the back of your tongue touches.
• To make the hard-x, practice moving further back from the tongue position for k, and creating heavy friction.  It is a little bit like growling.
• To get the right tongue position at the back, it may help to hold the tip of your tongue down with a pen or pencil while you practice.

Note about writing:  this letter often gets mixed up in writing, especially when text is transferred from one file to another (so that the ‘underline’ format is lost).  Some speakers write it with the underscore before or after (_x, or x_) to avoid having to use formatting.

(Image source: image is by Strang Burton, created as part of a UBC Linguistics project for diagraming sounds, partly supported by the UBC Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund, 2002, 2009)