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 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 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 [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 [k͡p]. 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:

IPA	Description	Example
IPA	Description	Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
	velar nasal	English	riTemplate:Bold dark red	[ɹɪTemplate:IPA bold dark red]	ring
	voiceless velar plosive	English	sTemplate:Bold dark redip	[sTemplate:IPA bold dark redɪp]	skip
	voiced velar plosive	English	Template:Bold dark redet	[Template:IPA bold dark redɛt]	get
	voiceless velar fricative	German	BauTemplate:Bold dark red	[baʊTemplate:IPA bold dark red]	abdomen
	voiced velar fricative	Margi	Template:Bold dark redàfə́	[Template:IPA bold dark redàfə́]	arrow
	voiceless labial-velar approximant	English	Template:Bold dark redich	[Template:IPA bold dark redɪtʃ]	which
	velar approximant	Spanish	paTemplate:Bold dark redar	[paTemplate:IPA bold dark redaɾ]	to pay
	velar lateral approximant	Mid-Waghi	aTemplate:Bold dark reda Template:Bold dark rede	[aTemplate:IPA bold dark redaTemplate:IPA bold dark rede]	dizzy
	labial-velar approximant	English	Template:Bold dark reditch	[Template:IPA bold dark redɪtʃ]	witch

¹In dialects that distinguish between which and witch.

²Intervocalic g in Spanish often described instead as a very lightly articulated voiced velar fricative.

citation needed

See also