Recent Articles

Voiceless velar plosive

The voiceless 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 k, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is k. The voiceless velar plosive occurs in English, and it is the sound denoted by the letter "c" in cat or the letter "k" in skin.

IPA - Unicode	k
IPA - image
X-SAMPA	k
Kirshenbaum	k
Sound sample

Features of this consonant:

• Its manner of articulation is plosive or stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.
• Its place of articulation is velar which means it is articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the velum).
• Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the center of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

The [k] sound is a very common sound cross-linguistically. Most languages have at least a plain [k], and some distinguish more than variety. Many Indian languages, such as Hindi, have a two-way contrast between aspirated and plain [k]. English has both aspirated and plain [k], but they are allophones.

Varieties of [k]

IPA	Description
k	plain k
kʰ	aspirated k
kʲ	palatalized k
kʷ	voiced k
kʼ	Sounds of the World's Languages
International Phonetic Alphabet
Consonants - Vowels
Places of articulation	Manners of articulation
Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal	Plosives Nasals Fricatives Approximants Lateral approximants Taps Trills Ejectives Implosives Clicks