Talk:Voiced labial–velar approximant

Might be worth pointing out that the German "w" is labiodental and thus different from the English "w" - also, examples? (131.130.121.106 11:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC))

German is illustrated at Labiodental approximant.

Monkbel has restored Belarusian ŭ, but without providing support. It only seems to be used in diphthongs, such as aŭ, eŭ, oŭ, and thus might be better characterized as a semivowel [u̯] than as an approximant [w]. kwami 11:09, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Discussion takes place at Talk:Short U. --Monkbel 14:46, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Two Questions

It says that the sound is the "voiced labiovelar (actually labialized velar) approximant". So shouldn't the article be moved to the "voiced labialized velar approximant" and have a redirect of this title ("Voiced labial-velar approximant") to it? I think having the correct term for the title is important.

Second, in the English pronunciation part of the graph I took the liberty to change the highighted (bolded) part to the "w" instead of the double "e"'s ("ee"). If this is incorrect please change it. Thank you. 98.27.171.83 (talk) 14:53, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Consistent descriptions

The title of the article is "Voiced labial-velar approximant". What is the significance of "labial-velar" as opposed to "labio-velar"? For comparison, the article on /wh/ is entitled "Voiceless labio-velar approximant". IMHO, we should combine the adjectives consistently, whether as "labio-velar" or as "labialised velar" - oops!, "labialized velar". yoyo (talk) 17:42, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The official IPA chart says "labialized velar." Have we gone from this in order to be neutral as to whether the labial aspects is secondary or coarticulataive? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:17, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The IPA chart in the article shows "w" as one of three "Co-articulated approximants". We should describe it in the standard way, and of course, not try to be "neutral" about matters of fact! Is there truly an open question about whether this sound is a co-articulation, in which the lip-rounding and the velar approximation are equally important features? If we follow the IPA standards - and we should, else we would clearly be doing "original research", thus violating the NOR guideline - we should change each and every description of the "w" sound in this article - including in its title - to "labialized velar approximant". yoyo (talk) 18:40, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

this article has a bit about variations in the pronunciation of /w/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:16, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Portuguese

Too bad there are never given any more but one examples. Currently, we've got água. However I think it would be much better to denote the difference between Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil). In Brazil, for instance, the common surname da Silva is pronounced [dɐˈsiwvɐ] OR (!) [dɐˈsiʊ̯vɐ] (don't ask, for me it sounds the same), whilst in Portugal, they'd pronounce it [dɐˈsiɫvɐ]. -andy 77.190.53.199 (talk) 19:40, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

please add the following sound file to the article

File:Voiced labio-velar approximant.ogg --> /EsB (talk) 09:17, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

What's the velar element?

I'm a native English speaker and my pronunciation of w only seems to involve rounding the lips; my tongue doesn't move at all and I can even move it around whilst saying "wawawa" without any problem, so I'm having trouble seeing why this is categorised as labio-velar. Have I just been mispronouncing the sound all my life? I sincerely doubt it, especially since even after experimenting I don't see how raising the back of the tongue could improve the sound. But then why is this called labio-velar? --92.147.116.199 (talk) 22:56, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree. I had similar thoughts about alveolar approximants, which seem velar to me. Maybe there are different ways of pronouncing the sound.Madeleined2 (talk) 21:13, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

: Alevo-velar approximant?

The traditional English "w" definitely has a velar element. The sound that you pronounce seems to be [β], the voiced bilabial approximant. I also use this sound for English "w", but I'm German. To my own ears the two sounds are practically indistinguishable. When I listen very closely to the recordings, I do hear a difference, but in practice I couldn't tell it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.206.131.253 (talk) 16:35, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

In the Ukrainian language

I've removed the instance of the occurrence of the labio-velar in the Ukrainian language as it simply does not occur (unless it is a speech impediment, which approximates pronouncing 'r' as a 'w' in the English language). The only form of 'v' in the Ukrainian languages is 'v'. Please present sources for having added the occurrence in the Ukrainian language other than old Galician dialect which occurred occasionally in some regions as the result of Polish and Ukrainians living cheek-by-jowl. WP:RS, not imagination, please. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 07:39, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Finnish

There is no mention of Finnish, which has a labio-velar approximant in the middle of words such as [ˈkiuwːɑs], which is especially interesting and noteworthy because it's one of the few sounds not shown in Finnish spelling. In fact, it's even missing from the article on Finnish phonology. --Espoo (talk) 15:30, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Belgian/Flemish pronunciation of the grapheme /w/

As a native speaker of this particular dialect I must say that I have never heard it being pronounced this way by a native from whichever province. If one would pronounce it this way in Belgium (Flanders) he would be taken for a francophone speaker (meaning there is a clear distinction between the french [w] and the flemish [β̞]) or perhaps a speaker from Suriname, since the native realization of the grapheme /w/ would indeed always be [w] in this dialect.

It is also not true that the [w] realization is considered as a standard pronunciation. If a news reader (in Flanders, as in many parts of the world I presume, they are considered to be the most refined speakers of the language and they adhere to a strict norm of standard Belgian Dutch) would pronounce the /w/ in words like welp,water,wassen or meeuwen he or she would be frowned upon at the least and her pronunciation would be considered extremely odd and non-native. The Belgian realization of this phoneme is exactly what this article states as its dialectal pronunciation and this is nationwide.

It is in fact the voiced bilabial approximant [β̞] that is used by any speaker I have met from West Flanders to Limburg (having resided in all of the 5 Dutch speaking provinces). It is the exact same sound as the Spanish /b/,/v/ in the non initial position, like in pavo for example. I will edit this in the article. If there are any objections, any person can annul my contribution. However, any native speaker from this area would tell you the same. Even if he weren't a linguist. Far too often have I seen that native speakers have psychologically accepted that a certain phoneme is pronounced a certain way on paper, not realizing it isn't. For example, in our schoolbooks the so called "right" pronunciation of this particular is noted as the labiodental approximant [ʋ] which is only native to the Netherlands and pretty far away from the flemish [β̞]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.226.96.15 (talk) 10:11, August 1, 2015‎

You are right that the bilabial approximant is the sound used in Flemish and also, post-consonantally, by some Dutch and German speakers. However, this is not the sound used for Spanish b, v, which is a bilabial fricative, not approximant.