Voiced velar fricative
consonantal sound
A voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in various spoken languages. It is not found in most varieties of Modern English but existed in Old English. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɣ⟩, a latinized variant of the Greek letter gamma, ⟨γ⟩, which has this sound in Modern Greek. It should not be confused with the graphically similar ⟨ɤ⟩, the IPA symbol for a close-mid back unrounded vowel, which some writings use for the voiced velar fricative.
The symbol ⟨ɣ⟩ is also sometimes used to represent the velar approximant, which, however, is more accurately written with the lowering diacritic: [ɣ̞] or [ɣ˕]. The IPA also provides a dedicated symbol for a velar approximant, [ɰ].
There is also a voiced post-velar fricative, also called pre-uvular, in some languages. For the voiced pre-velar fricative, also called post-palatal, see voiced palatal fricative § Pre-velar.
Features
Features of a voiced velar fricative:
Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
Its place of articulation is velar, which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) at the soft palate.
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This entry incorporates text from “Voiced velar fricative” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.