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'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 , 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:

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
Xsampa-N2.png	velar nasal	English
Xsampa-k.png	voiceless velar plosive	English	sip
Xsampa-g.png	voiced velar plosive	English	et
Xsampa-x.png	voiceless velar fricative	German	Bau	]	abdomen
Xsampa-G2.png	voiced velar fricative	Margi	àfə́
Xsampa-X.png	voiceless labial-velar approximant	English	ich[1]
Xsampa-Mslash.png	velar approximant	Spanish	paar[2]
Xsampa-Lslash.png	velar lateral approximant	Mid-Wahgi	aae
Xsampa-w2.png	labial-velar approximant	English	itch

It is important to not at this point that a velar ''trill'' or ''tap'' is not possible - see the ''shaded'' boxes on the consonant table at the bottom. In the velar position the tongue has an extremely restricted ability to carry out the type of motion associated with trills or taps. Nor does the soft palate have the freedom to vibrate quickly to produce the uvular trill and hypothetically a uvular flap.^[3]

Contents

Notes

See also

Notes

1. In dialects that distinguish between ''which'' and ''witch''.
2. ''g'' in Spanish often described instead as a very lightly articulated voiced velar fricative.
3. The International phonetic Alphabet

See also

★ Place of articulation

★ List of phonetics topics