The voiced velar stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. Some languages have the voiced pre-velar stop, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical voiced velar stop, though not as front as the prototypical voiced palatal stop. Conversely, some languages have the voiced post-velar stop, which is articulated slightly behind the place of articulation of the prototypical voiced velar stop, though not as back as the prototypical voiced uvular stop.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is g. Strictly, the IPA symbol is the so-called single-storey G, but the double-storey G is considered an acceptable alternative. The Unicode character renders as either a single-storey G or a double-storey G depending on font; the character is always a single-storey G, but it is generally available only in fonts with the IPA ExtensionsUnicode character block.
Features
Features of the voiced velar stop:
Occurrence
Of the six stops that would be expected from the most common pattern worldwide—that is, three places of articulation plus voicing — and are the most frequently missing, being absent in about 10% of languages that otherwise have this pattern. Absent stop is an areal feature. Missing, on the other hand, is widely scattered around the world, for example /ɡ/ is not a native phoneme of Belarusian, Dutch, Czech, Finnish or Slovak and occurs only in borrowed words in those languages. A few languages, such as Modern Standard Arabic and part of the Levantine dialects, are missing both, although most Modern Arabic dialects have in their native phonemic systems as a reflex of or less commonly of. It seems that is somewhat more difficult to articulate than the other basic stops. 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 will fill up with air quickly, making voicing difficult to maintain in for as long as it is in or. This could have two effects: and might become confused, and the distinction is lost, or perhaps a never develops when a language first starts making voicing distinctions. With uvulars, where there is even less space between the glottis and tongue for airflow, the imbalance is more extreme: Voiced is much rarer than voiceless. Many Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindustani, have a two-way contrast between aspirated and plain.
