Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the "velum").
Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive and the movements of the dorsumare not very precise, velars easily undergo assimilation, shifting their articulation back or to the frontdepending on the quality of adjacent vowels.[1] They often become automatically fronted, that is partly or completely palatal before a following front vowel, and retracted, that is partly or completely uvular before back vowels.
Palatalised velars (like English pronounced as //k// in keen or cube) are sometimes referred to as palatovelars. Many languages also have labialized velars, such as pronounced as /[kʷ]/, in which the articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips. There are also labial–velar consonants, which are doubly articulated at the velum and at the lips, such as pronounced as /[k͡p]/. This distinction disappears with the approximant consonant pronounced as /[w]/ since labialization involves adding of a labial approximant articulation to a sound, and this ambiguous situation is often called labiovelar.
A velar trill or tap is not possible according to the International Phonetics Association: see the shaded boxes on the table of pulmonic consonants. In the velar position, the tongue has an extremely restricted ability to carry out the type of motion associated with trills or taps, and the body of the tongue has no freedom to move quickly enough to produce a velar trill or flap.[2]
The velar consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
| IPA | Description | Example | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Orthography | IPA | Meaning | |||
| pronounced as /ŋ̊/ | voiceless velar nasal | Burmese | Burmese: [[Burmese alphabet|ငှါး]]/ | pronounced as /['''ŋ̊'''á]/ | 'borrow' | |
| pronounced as /ŋ/ | voiced velar nasal | English | ring | pronounced as /[ɹʷɪ'''ŋ''']/ | 'ring' | |
| pronounced as /k/ | English | skip | pronounced as /[s'''k'''ɪp]/ | 'skip' | ||
| pronounced as /ɡ/ | voiced velar plosive | English | ago | pronounced as /[ə'''ɡ'''oʊ̯]/ | 'ago' | |
| pronounced as /k͡x/ | Korean | 크다/keuda | pronounced as /['''k͡x'''ɯ̽da]/ | 'big' | ||
| pronounced as /ɡ͡ɣ/ | English | good | pronounced as /[ˈ'''ɡ͡ɣ'''ʊˑd̥]/ | 'good' | ||
| pronounced as /x/ | voiceless velar fricative | German | German: Bau'''ch''' | pronounced as /[baʊ'''x''']/ | 'abdomen' | |
| pronounced as /ɣ/ | voiced velar fricative | Greek | Greek, Modern (1453-);: '''γ'''άτα | pronounced as /[ˈ'''ɣ'''ata]/ | 'cat' | |
| pronounced as /ɰ/ | voiced velar approximant | Irish | Irish: n'''ao'''i | pronounced as /[n̪ˠ'''ɰ'''iː]/ | 'nine' | |
| pronounced as /ʍ/ | voiceless labial-velar fricative | English | which | pronounced as /['''ʍ'''ɪtʃ]/ | 'which' | |
| pronounced as /w/ | voiced labio-velar approximant | English | witch | pronounced as /['''w'''ɪtʃ]/ | 'witch' | |
| pronounced as /k͡/ (pronounced as /k͡ʟ̝̊/) | voiceless velar lateral affricate | Archi | [[Archi orthography|'''лӀ'''он]]/ | pronounced as /['''k͡'''on]/ | 'a flock' | |
| pronounced as /ɡ͡ʟ̝/ | voiced velar lateral affricate | Hiw | q'''r̄'''ē | pronounced as /[kʷ'''g͡ʟ'''ɪ]/ | 'dolphin' | |
| (pronounced as /ʟ̝̊/) | voiceless velar lateral fricative | Wahgi[3] | nòⱡ | pronounced as /[no''''''˩]/ | 'water' | |
| ̬ (pronounced as /ʟ̝/) | voiced velar lateral fricative | Archi[4] | [[Archi orthography|наӏ'''лъ'''дут]] | pronounced as /[naˤ'''̬'''dut]/ | 'blue' | |
| pronounced as /ʟ/ | voiced velar lateral approximant | Wahgi | aʟaʟe | pronounced as /[a'''ʟ'''a'''ʟ'''e]/ | 'dizzy' | |
| pronounced as /ʟ̆/ | voiced velar lateral tap | Melpa | ||||
| pronounced as /kʼ/ | velar ejective stop | Archi | '''кӀ'''ан | pronounced as /['''kʼ'''an]/ | 'bottom' | |
| pronounced as /k͡xʼ/ | velar ejective affricate | Hadza | dla'''gg'''wa | pronounced as /[cʎ̝̥ʼakxʷ’a]/ | 'to cradle' | |
| pronounced as /xʼ/ | velar ejective fricative | Tlingit | Tlingit: '''xʼ'''áa'''xʼ''' | 'apple' | ||
| pronounced as /k͡ʼ/ (k͡ʟ̝̊ʼ) | velar lateral ejective affricate | Sandawe | Sandawe: '''tl’'''ungu | pronounced as /[kʼùŋɡȕ]/ | 'sky' | |
| pronounced as /ɠ̊/ (ƙ) | voiceless velar implosive | Uspantek[5] | '''k{{' | pronounced as /[ɠ̊aːm]/ | 'cord/twine' | |
| pronounced as /ɠ/ | voiced velar implosive | Sindhi | Sindhi: ڳرو/ | pronounced as /['''ɠ'''əro]/ | 'heavy' | |
| pronounced as /ʞ/ | back-released velar click | Wolof (paralinguistic) | pronounced as /[ʞ]/ | 'yes' | ||
The velar consonant pronounced as /[k]/ is the most common consonant in human languages.[6] The only languages recorded to lack velars (and any dorsal consonant at all) may be Xavante, Tahitian, and (phonologically but not phonetically) several Skou languages (Wutung, a dialect of Vanimo, and Bobe). In Pirahã, men may lack the only velar consonant.
Other languages lack simple velars. An areal feature of the indigenous languages of the Americas of the coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest is that historical *k was palatalized. When such sounds remained stops, they were transcribed (IPA|kʸ) in Americanist phonetic notation, presumably corresponding to IPA (IPA|c), but in others, such as the Saanich dialect of Coastal Salish, Salish-Spokane-Kalispel, and Chemakum, *k went further and affricated to pronounced as /[tʃ]/. Likewise, historical *k’ has become pronounced as /[tʃʼ]/ and historical *x has become pronounced as /[ʃ]/; there was no *g or *ŋ. In the Northwest Caucasian languages, historical *pronounced as /[k]/ has also become palatalized, becoming pronounced as //kʲ// in Ubykh and pronounced as //tʃ// in most Circassian varieties. In both regions the languages retain a labialized velar series (e.g. pronounced as /[kʷ], [kʼʷ], [xʷ], [w]/ in the Pacific Northwest) as well as uvular consonants.[7] In the languages of those families that retain plain velars, both the plain and labialized velars are pre-velar, perhaps to make them more distinct from the uvulars which may be post-velar. Prevelar consonants are susceptible to palatalization. A similar system, contrasting pronounced as /
Apart from the voiceless plosive pronounced as /[k]/, no other velar consonant is particularly common, even the pronounced as /[w]/ and pronounced as /[ŋ]/ that occur in English. There can be no phoneme pronounced as //ɡ// in a language that lacks voiced stops, like Mandarin Chinese, but it is sporadically missing elsewhere. Of the languages surveyed in the World Atlas of Language Structures, about 10% of languages that otherwise have pronounced as //p b t d k// are missing pronounced as //ɡ//.[8]
Pirahã has both a pronounced as /[k]/ and a pronounced as /[ɡ]/ phonetically. However, the pronounced as /[k]/ does not behave as other consonants, and the argument has been made that it is phonemically pronounced as //hi//, leaving Pirahã with only pronounced as //ɡ// as an underlyingly velar consonant.
Hawaiian does not distinguish pronounced as /[k]/ from pronounced as /[t]/; (k) tends toward pronounced as /[k]/ at the beginning of utterances, pronounced as /[t]/ before pronounced as /[i]/, and is variable elsewhere, especially in the dialect of Niʻihau and Kauaʻi. Since Hawaiian has no pronounced as /[ŋ]/, and (w) varies between pronounced as /[w]/ and pronounced as /[v]/, it is not clearly meaningful to say that Hawaiian has phonemic velar consonants.
Several Khoisan languages have limited numbers or distributions of pulmonic velar consonants. (Their click consonants are articulated in the uvular or possibly velar region, but that occlusion is part of the airstream mechanism rather than the place of articulation of the consonant.) Khoekhoe, for example, does not allow velars in medial or final position, but in Juǀʼhoan velars are rare even in initial position.
Normal velar consonants are dorso-velar: The dorsum (body) of the tongue rises to contact the velum (soft palate) of the roof of the mouth. In disordered speech there are also velo-dorsal stops, with the opposite articulation: The velum lowers to contact the tongue, which remains static. In the extensions to the IPA for disordered speech, these are transcribed by reversing the IPA letter for a velar consonant, e.g. (IPA|) for a voiceless velodorsal stop, (IPA|) for voiced, and (IPA|) for a nasal.
| extIPA | (html) | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| pronounced as /𝼃/ | pronounced as /k/ | Voiceless velodorsal plosive | |
| pronounced as /𝼁/ | pronounced as /ɡ/ | Voiced velodorsal plosive | |
| pronounced as /𝼇/ | pronounced as /ŋ/ | Velodorsal nasal |
pronounced as /navigation/