Velar consonant

Lack of velars

The only languages recorded to lack phonemic velars (and any dorsal consonant at all) include Xavante, standard Tahitian (though /tVt/ is pronounced [kVt], a pattern also found in the Niihau dialect of Hawaiian), and arguably several Skou languages (Wutung, the Dumo dialect of Vanimo, and Bobe), which have a coda that has been analyzed as the realization of nasal vowels. No velar consonants have been found in data for Omurano, a language isolate of Peru. In Pirahã, men lack the only velar consonant.

Other languages lack simple velars. An areal feature of the indigenous languages of the Americas of the coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest is that historical *k was palatalized. When such sounds remained stops, they were transcribed ⟨⟩ in Americanist phonetic notation, presumably corresponding to IPA ⟨⟩, but in others, such as the Saanich dialect of Coastal Salish, Salish-Spokane-Kalispel, and Chemakum, *k went further and affricated to . Likewise, historical *k’ has become and historical *x has become ; there was no *g or *ŋ. In the Northwest Caucasian languages, historical * has also become palatalized, becoming in Ubykh and in most Circassian varieties. In both regions the languages retain a labialized velar series (e.g. in the North Caucasus) as well as uvular consonants. In the languages of those families that retain plain velars, both the plain and labialized velars are pre-velar, perhaps to make them more distinct from the uvulars which may be post-velar. Prevelar consonants are susceptible to palatalization. A similar system, contrasting with and leaving marginal at best, is reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European, assuming is reconstructed as a prevelar (as in the traditional reconstruction).

Apart from the voiceless plosive , no other velar consonant is particularly common, even the and that occur in English. There can be no phoneme in a language that lacks voiced stops, like Mandarin Chinese, but it is sporadically missing elsewhere. Of the languages surveyed in the World Atlas of Language Structures, about 10% of languages that otherwise have are missing .

Pirahã has both a and a phonetically. However, the does not behave as other consonants, and the argument has been made that it is phonemically , leaving Pirahã with only as an underlyingly velar consonant.

Hawaiian does not distinguish from ; ⟨k⟩ tends toward at the beginning of utterances, before , and is variable elsewhere, especially in the dialect of Niʻihau and Kauaʻi. Since Hawaiian has no , and ⟨w⟩ varies between and , it is not clearly meaningful to say that Hawaiian has phonemic velar consonants.

Several Khoisan languages have limited numbers or distributions of pulmonic velar consonants. (Their click consonants are articulated in the uvular or possibly velar region, but that occlusion is part of the airstream mechanism rather than the place of articulation of the consonant.) Khoekhoe, for example, does not allow velars in medial or final position, but in Juǀʼhoan velars are rare even in initial position.

Velodorsals

Normal velar consonants are dorso-velar: The dorsum (body) of the tongue rises to contact the velum (soft palate) of the roof of the mouth. In disordered speech there are also velo-dorsal stops, with the opposite articulation: The velum lowers to contact the tongue, which remains static. In the extensions to the IPA for disordered speech, these are transcribed by reversing the IPA letter for a velar consonant, e.g. ⟨⟩ for a voiceless velodorsal stop, ⟨⟩ for voiced, and ⟨⟩ for a nasal.

This convention will not work for the fricatives x and ɣ, though a downtack (⟨⟩, ⟨⟩ ~ ⟨⟩) can be used to fill the gap.