inhaling phonemes

inquisitor   Sat Jan 10, 2009 6:09 am GMT
Are there any phonemes which are inhaled rather than exhaled?
Caspian   Sat Jan 10, 2009 7:35 pm GMT
Certainly not in any of the languages I speak.
Language Lover   Wed Jan 14, 2009 7:55 pm GMT
Do you mean something like how Italian "ti" and English "tea" are different? I think that the "t" part is not aspirated in Italian and someone may tell you that it is like inhaling so that you don't give a puff of air like you would do with the "t" in "tea"-my answer, but let's hear from a linguist, please.
Lazar   Wed Jan 14, 2009 9:54 pm GMT
There is a category of ingressive sounds ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velaric_ingressive ), and more specifically, of implosive consonants ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implosive_consonant ). I've read that Swahili, for example, has implosives.