Voiced velar approximant
Consonantal sound represented by ⟨ɰ⟩ in IPA
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A voiced velar approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɰ⟩. In order to not imply that the approximant is spread as the vowel [ɯ] is, it may instead be transcribed ⟨ɣ̞⟩ or ⟨ɣ⟩ (or ⟨ɣ˕⟩, which is now dated). This is the symbol of the voiced velar fricative ⟨ɣ⟩ with a lowering diacritic.
| Voiced velar approximant | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| ɰ | |||
| ɣ | |||
| IPA number | 154 | ||
| Audio sample | |||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | ɰ | ||
| Unicode (hex) | U+0270 | ||
| X-SAMPA | M\ | ||
| Braille |   | ||
| |||
This consonant is absent from English, but may be approximated by making [ɡ] but with the tongue body lowered or [w] but with the lips apart. The voiced velar approximant can in many cases be considered the semivocalic counterpart of the close back unrounded vowel [ɯ]. ⟨ɰ⟩ and ⟨ɯ̯⟩ with the non-syllabic diacritic are used in different transcription systems to represent the same sound.
In some languages, such as Spanish, a voiced velar approximant is an allophone of /ɡ/ – see below.
For a voiced post-palatal approximant—sometimes also described as a voiced pre-velar approximant—which is more fronted in the place of articulation than a prototypical velar approximant, see Voiced palatal approximant § Post-palatal.
Features
Features of a voiced velar approximant:
- Its manner of articulation is approximant, which means it is produced by narrowing the vocal tract at the place of articulation, but not enough to produce a turbulent airstream. The most common type of this approximant is glide or semivowel. The term glide emphasizes the characteristic of movement (or 'glide') of [ɰ] from the [ɯ] vowel position to a following vowel position. The term semivowel emphasizes that, although the sound is vocalic in nature, it is not 'syllabic' (it does not form the nucleus of a syllable). For a description of the approximant consonant variant used e.g. in Spanish, see below.
- Its place of articulation is velar, which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) at the soft palate.
- Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
- It is an oral consonant, which means that air is not allowed to escape through the nose.
- It is a median consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream down the midline of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
- Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air only with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.
Occurrence
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aragonese[1] | caixigo | [kajˈʃiɣ̞o̞] | 'oak tree' | Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; allophone of /ɡ/. | |
| Astur-Leonese | Asturian | [example needed] | Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; allophone of /ɡ/. | ||
| Extremaduran | [example needed] | ||||
| Leonese | [example needed] | ||||
| Mirandese | [example needed] | ||||
| Catalan[2][3] | aigua | ⓘ | 'water' | Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; allophone of /ɡ/.[2][3] See Catalan phonology | |
| Cherokee | ᏩᏥ wa-tsi | [ɰad͡ʒi] | 'watch' | Found only in the Western dialect. Its equivalent in other dialects is [w]. Also represented by Ꮺ, Ꮻ, Ꮼ, Ꮽ, and Ꮾ | |
| Danish | Older speakers[4] | talg | [ˈtsʰalˀɣ̞] | 'tallow' | Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding. Still used by some older speakers in high register, much more commonly than a fricative [ɣ].[4] Depending on the environment, it corresponds to [w] or [j] in young speakers of contemporary Standard Danish.[5] See Danish phonology |
| Dutch | Western East Flemish[6] | Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding. Corresponds to a fricative [ɣ] in other dialects.[6] | |||
| French | Belgian[7] | ara | [aɣ̞a] | 'macaw' | Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding. Intervocalic, word-internal allophone of /ʀ/ for some speakers.[7] See French phonology |
| Galician[8] | órgano | ⓘ | 'organ' | Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; allophone of /ɡ/.[8] See Galician phonology | |
| Greek | Cypriot[9] | μαγαζί | [maɰazˈzi] | 'shop' | Allophone of /ɣ/. |
| Guarani | gotyo | [ɰoˈtɨo] | 'near, close to' | Contrasts with [w] | |
| Ñandewa Paulista-Paranaense[10] | [adʒaˈɰa] | 'I cut' | Contrasts with [ɡ].[10] | ||
| Hiw | wr̄og | [wɡ͡ʟɔɣ̞] | 'through' | Contrasts with /w/ and with /ɡ͡ʟ/.[11] | |
| Ibibio[12] | ufokọ | [úfʌ̟̀ɰɔ̞] | [translation needed] | Intervocalic allophone of /k/; may be a uvular tap [ɢ̆] instead.[12] | |
| Icelandic | Skagabyggð | ⓘ | 'Skagabyggð' | Approximant consonant[13] unspecified for rounding.[citation needed] See Icelandic phonology | |
| Irish | naoi | ⓘ | 'nine' | Occurs only between broad consonants and front vowels. See Irish phonology | |
| Korean | 의사 / uisa | [ɰisɐ] | 'doctor' | Occurs only before /i/. See Korean phonology | |
| Mwotlap | haghag | [haɣ̞haɣ̞] | 'sit' | Contrasts with [w].[14] | |
| Shipibo[15] | igi | [i̞ɣ̞i̞] | [translation needed] | Unspecified for rounding; varies between an approximant and a fricative. Allophone of /k/ in certain high-frequency morphemes.[15] | |
| Spanish[16] | pagar | ⓘ | 'to pay' | Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; allophone of /ɡ/.[16] See Spanish phonology | |
| Swedish | Central Standard[17] | temadagarna | ⓘ | 'themed day' | Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; allophone of /ɡ/ in casual speech. See Swedish phonology |
| Tagalog | igriega | [iːɡɾɪˈje̞ɣ̞ɐ] | 'y (letter)' | Approximant consonant unspecified for rounding; intervocalic allophone of /ɡ/. See Tagalog phonology | |
| Tiwi | ngaga | [ˈŋaɰa] | 'we (inclusive)' | ||
| Vietnamese | Southern | gặp | ⓘ | 'to meet, to see' | Typical realization of /ɡɣ/ or /ɣ/ in other dialects. Variant is in complementary distribution before open vowels. |
Nasal
A nasalized voiced velar approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is typically ⟨ɰ̃⟩ or ⟨ɣ̞̃⟩.
Features
- Its manner of articulation is approximant, which means it is produced by narrowing the vocal tract at the place of articulation, but not enough to produce a turbulent airstream.
- Its place of articulation is velar, which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) at the soft palate.
- Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
- It is a nasal consonant, which means air is exclusively allowed to escape through the nose for nasal stops; otherwise, in addition to through the mouth.
- It is a median consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream down the midline of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
- Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air only with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.
Occurrence
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guaraní | Paraguayan | guaraníme | [ɰ̃ʷãɾ̃ãˈnĩmẽ] | 'in Guarani' | Allophone of /ɰ/ due to nasal vowel-consonant harmony, though typically retains some degree of labialization; may therefore be closer to [w̃].[18][19] |
| Japanese | 三位 / san'i | [sɑ̃ɰ̃ːi] | 'third rank' | Syllable-final moraic nasal realization; broadly described as dorso-velar, though exact placement of articulation varies.[20] See Japanese phonology | |
| Nizaa | ŋun | [ɰ̃ʊ˧n] | 'boy/girl' | Non-syllable coda realization of [ŋ].[21] See Nizaa phonology. | |
| Ikwerre | [àˈɣ̞̃ã́] | 'to bask in the sun' | Allophone of /ɣ̞/ before nasal vowels, due to nasal vowel-consonant harmony.[22] | ||
Voiced velar bunched approximant
| Voiced velar bunched approximant | |
|---|---|
| ɹ̈ | |
| Encoding | |
| X-SAMPA | r\_" |
Some languages have a velar approximant that is produced with the body of the tongue bunched up at the velum and simultaneous pharyngealization. This gives rise to a type of retroflex resonance that is indistinguishable from [ɻ].[23] The extension to the IPA recommends the use of the "centralized" diacritic, ⟨ɹ̈⟩, to distinguish the bunched realization from the apical articulation ⟨ɹ̺⟩. Typically, the diacritic is omitted, so that the sound is transcribed simply with ⟨ɹ⟩ or ⟨ɻ⟩ as if it were a coronal consonant.
In Dutch, this type of r is called Gooise r [ˌɣoːisə ˈʔɛr] 'Gooi r'. It is named after het Gooi, a region of the Netherlands where Hilversum (the main centre for television and radio broadcasting) is located. One source is quoted as claiming a typical realization of this sound (in particular, the further back uvular [ʁ]) as a pre-uvular approximant [ʁ̞˖].[24]
Features
Features of a voiced velar bunched approximant:
- Its manner of articulation is approximant, which means it is produced by narrowing the vocal tract at the place of articulation, but not enough to produce a turbulent airstream. The body of the tongue is bunched up at the velum, rather than just approaching it as it is the case with the prototypical velar approximant.
- Its place of articulation is velar, which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) at the soft palate.
- Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
- It is an oral consonant, which means that air is not allowed to escape through the nose.
- It is a median consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream down the midline of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
- Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air only with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.
Occurrence
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dutch | Randstad varieties[23] | maar | [ˈmaːɹ̈] | 'but' | Common allophone of /r/ in the syllable coda, where it contrasts with [w]. The bunching and pharyngealization may be lost in connected speech, resulting in a semivowel such as [j] or [ə̯].[25] See Dutch phonology |
| Standard Northern[23] | |||||
| English | American[26] | red | [ɹ̈ʷɛd] | 'red' | Possible realization of /r/; auditorily indistinguishable from apical [ɹ̺].[26] See Pronunciation of English /r/ |
| Received Pronunciation[26] | curious | [ˈkj̊ʊːɹ̈iəs] | 'curious' | ||
Relation with [ɡ] and [ɣ]
Some languages have a voiced velar approximant that is unspecified for rounding, and therefore cannot be considered the semivocalic equivalent of either [ɯ] or its rounded counterpart [u]. Examples of such languages are Catalan, Galician and Spanish, in which the approximant consonant (not semivowel) unspecified for rounding appears as an allophone of /ɡ/.[8]
Eugenio Martínez Celdrán describes the voiced velar approximant consonant as follows:[27]
As for the symbol ⟨ɰ⟩, it is quite evidently inappropriate for representing the Spanish voiced velar approximant consonant. Many authors have pointed out the fact that [ɰ] is not rounded; for example, Pullum & Ladusaw (1986:98) state that 'the sound in question can be described as a semi-vowel (glide) with the properties "high", "back", and "unrounded"'. They even establish an interesting parallelism: 'the sound can be regarded as an unrounded [w]'. It is evident, then, that ⟨ɰ⟩ is not an adequate symbol for Spanish. First of all, because it has never been taken into consideration that there is a diphthong in words like paga 'pay', vago 'lazy', lego 'lay', etc., and, secondly, because this sound is rounded when it precedes rounded vowels. Besides, it would be utterly wrong to transcribe the word jugo 'juice' with ⟨ɰ⟩ *[ˈχuɰo], because the pronunciation of that consonant between two rounded vowels is completely rounded whereas [ɰ] is not. [...]
The symbol I have always proposed is ⟨ɣ̞⟩, the correlate to the other central approximants in Spanish, [β̞ ð̞] (Martínez Celdrán 1991, 1996:47). This coincides with Ball & Rahilly (1999:90), whose example for the three approximants is the Spanish word abogado 'lawyer'[...]. Ball & Rahilly too criticise in a footnote the confusion between these symbols: 'The difference between an approximant version of the voiced velar fricative [ɣ], and the velar semi-vowel [ɰ] is that the latter requires spread lips, and must have a slightly more open articulatory channel so that it becomes [ɯ] if prolonged' (p. 189, fn. 1).
There is a parallel problem with transcribing the palatal approximant.
In broad transcription,[28] the lowering diacritic may be omitted, so that the symbol is rendered ⟨ɣ⟩ as with the corresponding fricative.