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It’s actually a glottal sound, meaning it emanates from the glottis, in the back of the throat — a muscle English speakers don’t get to exercise much.

“One end was in his esophagus, and the other in his windpipe, sticking out of his glottis,” Dr. Chen Zeyu, the hospital’s chief gastroenterologist, told AsiaWire.

He’s seen every affliction: bacteria, broken bones, even a rare case of balloon syndrome, in which a damaged glottis caused a hedgehog to inflate to the size of a beach ball.

Her dentist father gave the anatomically correct translation: Close off your glottis.

Lizards achieve this sound “by forcing air out of the lungs across the glottis,” Espinoza explains.