Everything about The Voiced Velar Plosive totally explained
The
voiced velar plosive is a type of
consonantal sound, used in some
spoken languages. The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɡ, and the equivalent
X-SAMPA symbol is
g. Strictly, the IPA symbol is the so-called "opentail G", though the "looptail G" is considered an acceptable alternative. The Unicode character "Latin small letter G" (U+0067) renders as either an opentail G or a looptail G depending on font, while the character "Latin small letter script G" (U+0261) is always an opentail G, but is generally available only in fonts with the
IPA Extensions character block.
Of the six plosives that would be expected from the most common pattern world-wide, that is, three places of articulation plus voicing ([pb, t d, k ɡ]), [p] and [ɡ] are the most frequently missing, being absent in about 10% of languages that otherwise have this pattern. The former is an
areal feature (see
Voiceless bilabial plosive). Missing [ɡ], on the other hand, is widely scattered around the world. (A few languages, such as
Modern Standard Arabic and
Ket, are missing both.) It seems that [ɡ] is somewhat more difficult to articulate than the other basic plosives.
Ian Maddieson speculates that this may be due to a physical difficulty in voicing velars: Voicing requires that air flow into the mouth cavity, and the relatively small space allowed by the position of velar consonants means that it'll fill up with air quickly, making voicing difficult to maintain in [ɡ] for as long as it's in [d] or [b]. This could have two effects: [ɡ] and [k] might become confused, and the distinction is lost, or perhaps a [ɡ] never develops when a language first starts making voicing distinctions. (with uvulars, where there's even less space between the
glottis and tongue for airflow, the imbalance is more extreme: Voiced [ɢ] is much rarer than voiceless [q]).
Many
Indian languages, such as
Hindi, have a two-way contrast between
aspirated and plain [g].
Features
Features of the voiced velar plosive:
Varieties of [ɡ]
Occurrence
Further Information
Get more info on 'Voiced Velar Plosive'.
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