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Voiced velar plosive
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Voiced velar plosive
A voiced velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages.
Some languages have a voiced pre-velar plosive, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical velar plosive, though not as front as the prototypical palatal plosive.
Conversely, some languages have a voiced post-velar plosive, which is articulated slightly behind the place of articulation of the prototypical velar plosive, though not as back as the prototypical uvular plosive.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɡ⟩. The traditional IPA symbol is the so-called single-storey or opentail G 
, but the double-storey or looptail G 
is acceptable. The Unicode character U+0067 g LATIN SMALL LETTER G renders as either a single-storey G or a double-storey G depending on font; the character U+0261 ɡ LATIN SMALL LETTER SCRIPT G is always a single-storey G, but it is generally available only in fonts supporting the IPA Extensions Unicode character block.
Features of a voiced velar stop:
Of the six stops that would be expected from the most common pattern worldwide—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. The lack of a voiceless bilabial stop [p] is an areal feature. Missing [ɡ], (when the language uses voicing to contrast stops) on the other hand, is widely scattered around the world, for example /ɡ/ is not a native phoneme of Belarusian, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Czech, and Slovak and occurs only in borrowed words in those languages. A few languages, such as Modern Standard Arabic and part of the Levantine dialects (e.g. Lebanese and Syrian), are missing both, although most of the other Arabic dialects have /ɡ/ in their native phonemic systems as a reflex of ⟨ق⟩ or less commonly of ⟨ج⟩.
It seems that [ɡ] 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 [ɡ] for as long as it is in [d] or [b]. 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. 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].
In many Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindustani, plain [g] and aspirated [gh] are in contrastive distribution.
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Voiced velar plosive
A voiced velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages.
Some languages have a voiced pre-velar plosive, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical velar plosive, though not as front as the prototypical palatal plosive.
Conversely, some languages have a voiced post-velar plosive, which is articulated slightly behind the place of articulation of the prototypical velar plosive, though not as back as the prototypical uvular plosive.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɡ⟩. The traditional IPA symbol is the so-called single-storey or opentail G , but the double-storey or looptail G is acceptable. The Unicode character U+0067 g LATIN SMALL LETTER G renders as either a single-storey G or a double-storey G depending on font; the character U+0261 ɡ LATIN SMALL LETTER SCRIPT G is always a single-storey G, but it is generally available only in fonts supporting the IPA Extensions Unicode character block.
Features of a voiced velar stop:
Of the six stops that would be expected from the most common pattern worldwide—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. The lack of a voiceless bilabial stop [p] is an areal feature. Missing [ɡ], (when the language uses voicing to contrast stops) on the other hand, is widely scattered around the world, for example /ɡ/ is not a native phoneme of Belarusian, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Czech, and Slovak and occurs only in borrowed words in those languages. A few languages, such as Modern Standard Arabic and part of the Levantine dialects (e.g. Lebanese and Syrian), are missing both, although most of the other Arabic dialects have /ɡ/ in their native phonemic systems as a reflex of ⟨ق⟩ or less commonly of ⟨ج⟩.
It seems that [ɡ] 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 [ɡ] for as long as it is in [d] or [b]. 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. 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].
In many Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindustani, plain [g] and aspirated [gh] are in contrastive distribution.
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