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- Because of technical restrictions the symbol for the voiced velar plosive might be rendered as an uppercase Y instead of an opentail lower-case g on your system.
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 ([p b, t d, k ɡ]), [p] and [ɡ] are the most frequently missing, being absent in about 10% of languages that otherwise have this pattern.[citation needed] The former is an areal feature (see Voiceless bilabial plosive).[citation needed] Missing [ɡ], on the other hand, is widely scattered around the world.[citation needed] (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 will fill up with air quickly, making voicing difficult to maintain in [ɡ] for as long as it is in [d] or [b].[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] (with uvulars, where there is even less space between the glottis and tongue for airflow, the imbalance is more extreme: Voiced [ɢ] is much rarer than voiceless [q][citation needed]). Many Indian languages, such as Hindi, have a two-way contrast between aspirated and plain [g].
[edit] Features
Features of the voiced velar plosive:
[edit] Varieties of [g]
[edit] Occurrence
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] Bibliography
- Carbonell, Joan F. & Joaquim Llisterri (1992), "Catalan", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (1-2): 53-56
- Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995), "European Portuguese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 25 (2): 90-94
- Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (1): 103-107
- Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Ana Ma. Fernández-Planas & Josefina Carrera-Sabaté (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255-259
- Padgett, Jaye (2003), "Contrast and Post-Velar Fronting in Russian", Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 21 (1): 39-87
- Rogers, Derek & Luciana d'Arcangeli (2004), "Italian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (1): 117-121
- Shosted, Ryan K. & Chikovani Vakhtang (2006), "Standard Georgian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 36 (2): 255-264
| Consonants (List, table) |
See also: IPA, Vowels |
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This page contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help]
Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant. Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged impossible. |
, 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.
