Voiced velar approximant

Features of the 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 air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.

• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.

• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Aragonese[2]		caixigo	[kajˈʃiɣ̞o̞]	'oak tree'	Unspecified for rounding voiced velar approximant consonant; allophone of /ɡ/.
Astur-Leonese	Asturian				Unspecified for rounding voiced velar approximant consonant; allophone of /ɡ/.
	Extremaduran
	Leonese
	Mirandese
Catalan[3][4]		aigua	[ˈajɣ̞wə]	'water'	Unspecified for rounding voiced velar approximant consonant; allophone of /ɡ/.[3][4] 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[5]	talg	[ˈtsʰalˀɣ̞]	'tallow'	Unspecified for rounding voiced velar approximant consonant. Still used by some older speakers in high register, much more commonly than a fricative [ɣ].[5] Depending on the environment, it corresponds to [w] or [j] in young speakers of contemporary Standard Danish.[6] See Danish phonology
Dutch	East Flemish[7]				Typical realization of /ɣ/ in western dialects.[7]
French	Belgian[8]	ara	[aɰa]	'macaw'	Intervocalic allophone of /ʀ/ for some speakers, unless /ʀ/ is realized as a liaison consonant – then, most often, it is realized as a trill [ʀ].[8] See French phonology
Galician[9]		auga	[ˈɑwɣ̞ɑ]	'water'	Unspecified for rounding voiced velar approximant consonant; allophone of /ɡ/.[9] See Galician phonology
Greek	Cypriot[10]	μαγαζί	[maɰaˈzi]	'shop'	Allophone of /ɣ/.
Guarani		gotyo	[ɰoˈtɨo]	'near, close to'	Contrasts with [w]
Hiw		ter̄og	[təɡ͡ʟɔɰ]	'peace'	Phoneme realised [ɣ̞] in onsets, [ɰ] in codas. Contrasts with /w/ and with /ɡ͡ʟ/.[11]
Ibibio[12]		ufokọ	[úfʌ̟̀ɰɔ̞]		Intervocalic allophone of /k/; may be a uvular tap [ɢ̆] instead.[12]
Icelandic		saga	[ˈsäːɣ̞ä]	'saga'	Unspecified for rounding voiced velar approximant consonant. See Icelandic phonology
Irish		naoi	[n̪ˠɰiː]	'nine'	Occurs only between broad consonants and front vowels. See Irish phonology
Japanese		わくせい	[ɰakɯsei]	'planet'
Korean		의사 / uisa	[ɰisɐ]	'doctor'	Occurs only before /i/. See Korean phonology
Mwotlap		haghag	[haɰhaɰ]	'sit'	Realised [ɰ] or [ɣ̞]. Contrasts with [w].[13]
Shipibo[14]		igi	[i̞ɰi̞]		Allophone of /k/ in certain high-frequency morphemes; can be realized as a fricative [ɣ] instead.[14]
Spanish[15]		pagar	[päˈɣ̞äɾ]	'to pay'	Unspecified for rounding voiced velar approximant consonant; allophone of /ɡ/.[15] See Spanish phonology
Swedish	Central Standard[16]	agronom	[äɣ̞ɾʊˈn̪oːm]	'agronomist'	Unspecified for rounding voiced velar approximant consonant; allophone of /ɡ/ in casual speech. See Swedish phonology
Tagalog		igriega	[iːɡɾɪˈje̞ɰɐ]	'y (letter)'	See Tagalog phonology
Tiwi		ngaga	[ˈŋaɰa]	'we (inclusive)'
Venetian		góndoƚa	[ˈɡoŋdoɰa]	'gondola'	See Venetian language
Vietnamese	Southern	gà	[ɣ̞a:˨˩]	'chicken'	Typical realization of /ɡɣ/ or /ɣ/ in other dialects. Variant is in complementary distribution before open vowels.

The sound in Japanese often denoted by ⟨w⟩ in IPA notation and described as unrounded is actually pronounced with lip compression and is therefore labio-velar, albeit with acoustic differences from other labio-velar consonants.

Pre-velar

Non syllabic version of [ɨ].

Voiced pre-velar approximant
j˗
ɰ˖
ɨ̯
Encoding
X-SAMPA	j-
Audio sample
source · help

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Spanish[17]		seguir	[se̞ˈɰ˖iɾ]	'to follow'	Lenited allophone of /ɡ/ before front vowels;[17] typically transcribed in IPA with ⟨ɣ⟩. See Spanish phonology

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 unspecified for rounding voiced velar approximant consonant (not semivowel) appears as an allophone of /ɡ/.[9]

Eugenio Martínez Celdrán describes the voiced velar approximant consonant as follows:[19]

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' (see figure 1). 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.

The symbol ⟨ɣ̞⟩ may also be used when the voiced velar approximant is merely an allophone of the voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ as, compared with ⟨ɰ⟩, it is more similar to the symbol ⟨ɣ⟩. The X-SAMPA equivalent of ⟨ɣ̞⟩ is G_o.

The symbol ⟨ɣ̞⟩ may not display properly in all browsers. In that case, ⟨ɣ˕⟩ should be substituted. In broader transcriptions,[20] the lowering diacritic may be omitted altogether, so that the symbol is rendered ⟨ɣ⟩, i.e. as if it represented the corresponding fricative.

• Index of phonetics articles

• List of languages with [ɰ] on PHOIBLE