Labial–velar consonant


Labial–velar consonants are doubly articulated at the velum and the lips, such as. They are sometimes called "labiovelar consonants", a term that can also refer to labialized velars, such as the stop consonant and the approximant.

Doubly articulated labial-velars

Truly doubly articulated labial-velars include the stops and the nasal. To pronounce them, one must attempt to say the velar consonants but then close their lips for the bilabial component, and then release the lips. While 90% of the occlusion overlaps, the onset of the velar occurs slightly before that of the labial, and the release of the labial occurs slightly after that of the velar so the preceding vowel sounds as if it were followed by a velar, and the following vowel sounds as if it were preceded by a labial. The order of the letters in and is therefore not arbitrary but motivated by the phonetic details of the sounds.
Phonemic labial–velars occur in the majority of languages in West and Central Africa, and are relatively common in the eastern end of New Guinea. In Southeast Asia, they occur in the Adu dialect of Nuosu, which aside from its isolated location, is unusual in having a relatively large inventory of labial-velar consonants, including the rare aspirated version:.
The Yele language of Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea, has both labial–velars and labial–alveolar consonants. Labial–velar stops and nasals also occur in Vietnamese but only word-finally.
These sounds are clearly single consonants rather than consonant clusters. For example, Eggon contrasts,, and. The following possibilities are possible if tone is ignored:
Allophonic labial-velars are known from Vietnamese, where they are variants of the plain velar consonants and.

Similar phonemes

Doubly articulated labial-velars with labialization

Some languages, especially in Papua New Guinea and in Vanuatu, combine the labial–velar consonants with a labial–velar approximant release:,. The extinct language Volow had a prenasalised labial-velar stop with labialization.

Other variants

Labial–velar stops also occur as ejective and implosive ; Floyd reports a voiceless implosive from Igbo. There may be voiced labio-velar approximants in languages like English. Bilabial clicks are sometimes considered to be labial–velar consonants as well, but the velar articulation is part of the airstream mechanism.