Velar consonant
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, known also 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. They often become automatically
fronted, that is partly or completely
palatal before a following front vowel, and
retracted before back vowels.
Palatalised velars (like English /k/ in
keen or
cube) are sometimes referred to as
palatovelars.Many languages also have
labialized velars, such as , 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 . This distinction disappears with the
approximant [w], since labialization involves adding of a labial approximant articulation to a sound, and this ambiguous situation is often called
labiovelar.
The velar consonants identified by the
International Phonetic Alphabet are:
1In
dialects that distinguish between
which and
witch.
2Intervocalic g in Spanish often described instead as a very lightly articulated
voiced velar fricative.
*
Place of articulation*
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