velar

Velar refers to sounds produced with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) contacting or approaching the velum, the soft palate at the rear of the mouth. It is also an anatomical term for the velum itself. In phonetics, velars are contrasted with sounds made at other places of articulation such as bilabial, alveolar, palatal, uvular, or glottal.

Common velar consonants include the voiceless plosive /k/ as in cat, the voiced plosive /g/ as in go, and the velar nasal /ŋ/ as in sing. Velar fricatives occur in various languages, such as /x/ in Scottish Gaelic or Spanish, and some languages also have a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/. The approximant /w/ is sometimes described as having a velar element and is often treated as a labio-velar sound rather than a pure velar. Velars can appear with different voicing, aspiration, and in some languages as ejectives or other variants.

Phonologically, velars constitute a distinct place of articulation and interact with other places of articulation in a language's inventory. The velum itself also serves a crucial anatomical role: it closes the nasal cavity during oral consonant production and lowers to nasalize vowels. Velar sounds thus lie on a spectrum with palatal and other dorsal consonants and may contrast with them in many languages, contributing to the rich diversity of consonant systems worldwide.