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	ring	[ɹɪŋ]	ring
	voiceless velar plosive	English	skip	[skɪp]	skip
	voiced velar plosive	English	get	[ɡɛt]	get
	voiceless velar fricative	German	Bauch	[baʊx]	abdomen
	voiced velar fricative	Margi	ɣàfə́	[ɣàfə́]	arrow
	voiceless labial-velar approximant	English	which¹	[ʍɪtʃ]	which
	velar approximant	Spanish	pagar²	[paɰaɾ]	to pay
	velar lateral approximant	Mid-Waghi	aʟaʟe	[aʟaʟe]	dizzy
	labial-velar approximant	English	witch	[wɪtʃ]	witch