Velar consonants are

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

articulated An articulated vehicle is a vehicle which has a permanent or semi-permanent coupling in its construction. This coupling works as a large pivot joint, allowing it to bend and turn more sharply. There are many kinds, from heavy equipment to buse ...

with the back part of the

tongue The tongue is a Muscle, muscular organ (anatomy), organ in the mouth of a typical tetrapod. It manipulates food for chewing and swallowing as part of the digestive system, digestive process, and is the primary organ of taste. The tongue's upper s ...

(the dorsum) against the

soft palate The soft palate (also known as the velum, palatal velum, or muscular palate) is, in mammals, the soft biological tissue, tissue constituting the back of the roof of the mouth. The soft palate is part of the palate of the mouth; the other part is ...

, 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 dorsum are not very precise, velars easily undergo assimilation, shifting their articulation back or to the front depending on the quality of adjacent vowels. They often become automatically ''fronted'', that is partly or completely

palatal The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly sepa ...

before a following front vowel, and ''retracted'', that is partly or completely

uvular Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not prov ...

before back vowels. Palatalised velars (like English in ''keen'' or ''cube'') are sometimes referred to as palatovelars. Many languages also have

labialized Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels invol ...

velars, such as , in which the articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips. There are also

labial–velar consonant Labial–velar consonants are doubly articulated at the velum and the lips, such as . They are sometimes called "labiovelar consonants", a term that can also refer to labialized velars, such as the stop consonant and the approximant . Labial ...

s, which are doubly articulated at the velum and at the lips, such as . This distinction disappears with the

approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do prod ...

since labialization involves adding of a labial approximant articulation to a sound, and this ambiguous situation is often called labiovelar. A velar

trill TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is a networking protocol for optimizing bandwidth and resilience in Ethernet networks, implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and ...

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.

Examples

The velar consonants identified by the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

are:

Lack of velars

The only languages recorded to lack velars (and any dorsal consonant at all) may be

Xavante The Xavante (also Shavante, Chavante, Akuen, A'uwe, Akwe, Awen, or Akwen) are an indigenous people, comprising about 30,000 individuals within the territory of eastern Mato Grosso state in Brazil. They speak the Xavante language, part of the J� ...

, standard Tahitian (though /tVt/ is pronounced Vt a pattern also found in the

Niihau dialect Niihau (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ), anglicized as Niihau ( ), is the seventh largest island in Hawaii and the westernmost of the main islands. It is southwest of Kauai, Kauai across the Channels of the Hawaiian Islands#Kaulakahi Channel, Ka ...

of Hawaiian), and arguably several

Skou languages The Sko or Skou languages are a small language family spoken by about 7000 people, mainly along the Vanimo coast of Sandaun Province in Papua New Guinea, with a few being inland from this area and at least one just across the border in the Indone ...

( Wutung, the Dumo dialect of

Vanimo Vanimo is the capital of Sandaun Province (West Sepik) in north-westernmost Papua New Guinea and of Vanimo-Green River District. It is located on a peninsula close to the Indonesia–Papua New Guinea border, border with Indonesia, nearest to Jaya ...

, and Bobe), which have a coda that has been analyzed as the realization of

nasal vowel A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel /ɑ̃/ () or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are p ...

s. 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 The Pacific Northwest (PNW; ) is a geographic region in Western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common ...

is that historical *k was palatalized. When such sounds remained stops, they were transcribed in

Americanist phonetic notation Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American ...

, presumably corresponding to IPA , but in others, such as the

Saanich dialect Saanich (also Sənčáθən, written as in Saanich orthography, ) is the language of the First Nations Saanich people in the Pacific Northwest region of northwestern North America. Saanich is a Coast Salishan language in the Northern Straits ...

Coastal Salish The Coast Salish peoples are a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak one o ...

, Salish-Spokane-Kalispel, and Chemakum, *k went further and affricated to . Likewise, historical *k’ has become and historical *x has become ; there was no *g or *ŋ. In the

Northwest Caucasian languages The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes Pontic languages (from Ancient Greek, ''pontos'', referring to the Black Sea, in contrast to the Northeast Caucasian ...

, historical * has also become palatalized, becoming in

Ubykh Ubykh may refer to: * Ubykh language * Ubykh people * Ubykhia, a historical land of Ubykhs {{disambig Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...

and in most Circassian varieties. In both regions the languages retain a labialized velar series (e.g. in the North Caucasus) as well as

uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not ...

s. 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 with and leaving marginal at best, is reconstructed for

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

. Apart from the voiceless plosive , no other velar consonant is particularly common, even the and that occur in English. There can be no phoneme in a language that lacks voiced stops, like

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...

, but it is sporadically missing elsewhere. Of the languages surveyed in the ''World Atlas of Language Structures'', about 10% of languages that otherwise have are missing .The World Atlas of Language Structures Online:Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems
/ref> Pirahã has both a and a phonetically. However, the does not behave as other consonants, and the argument has been made that it is phonemically , leaving Pirahã with only as an underlyingly velar consonant. Hawaiian does not distinguish from ; tends toward at the beginning of utterances, before , and is variable elsewhere, especially in the dialect of Niihau and Kauai. Since Hawaiian has no , and varies between and , it is not clearly meaningful to say that Hawaiian has phonemic velar consonants. Several

Khoisan languages The Khoisan languages ( ; also Khoesan or Khoesaan) are a number of Languages of Africa, African languages once classified together, originally by Joseph Greenberg. Khoisan is defined as those languages that have click languages, click consonant ...

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 In phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created in the vocal tract. Along with phonation and articulation, it is one of three main components of speech production. The airstream mechanism is mandatory for most sou ...

rather than the place of articulation of the consonant.)

Khoekhoe Khoikhoi ( /ˈkɔɪkɔɪ/ ''KOY-koy'') (or Khoekhoe in Namibian orthography) are the traditionally nomadic pastoralist indigenous population of South Africa. They are often grouped with the hunter-gatherer San (literally "foragers") peop ...

, for example, does not allow velars in medial or final position, but in Juǀʼhoan velars are rare even in initial position.

consonants

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 The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA , are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the Internati ...

for disordered speech, these are transcribed by reversing the IPA letter for a velar consonant, e.g. for a voiceless velodorsal stop, for voiced, and for a nasal.

Examples

Lack of velars

consonants

See also

Notes

References

Further reading