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 labiovelar phonemes, including the approximant /w/ and others given symbols like /kʷ/ etc. In these the articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips.

The velar consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

IPA	Description	Example
		Language	Orthography	IPA	Meaning
	velar nasal	English		[ɹɪ]	ring
	voiceless velar plosive	English	skip	[skɪp]	skip
	voiced velar plosive	English	get	[ɡɛt]	get
	voiceless velar fricative	Hebrew	מיכאל	[mixel]	Michael
	voiced velar fricative	Margi	ɣàfə́	[ɣàfə́]	arrow
	voiceless labio-velar fricative	English	which	[ʍɪtʃ]	which
	velar approximant	Spanish	pagar1	[paɰaɾ]	to pay
	velar lateral approximant	Mid-Waghi	aʟaʟe	[aʟaʟe]	dizzy
	labio-velar approximant	English	witch	[wɪtʃ]	witch

¹Intervocalic g in Spanish often described instead as a very lightly articulated voiced velar fricative.

²In dialects that distinguish between which and witch.

See also

• Place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics