| Velar Consonant |
Index for Velar |
Information AboutVelar Consonant |
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Velars are Consonant s 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 Consonant s, which are doubly articulated at the velum and at the lips, such as . This distinction disappears with the Approximant {Link without Title} , 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: 1In Dialect s that distinguish between ''which'' and ''witch''. 2 Intervocalic ''g'' in Spanish often described instead as a very lightly articulated Voiced Velar Fricative . See also |