Voiced velar approximant

Features of a voiced velar approximant: The most common type of this approximant is glide or semivowel. The term glide emphasizes the characteristic of movement (or 'glide') of from the vowel position to a following vowel position. The term semivowel emphasizes that, although the sound is vocalic in nature, it is not 'syllabic' (it does not form the nucleus of a syllable). For a description of the approximant consonant variant used e.g. in Spanish, see below. == Occurrence ==

A nasalized voiced velar approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is typically or . Features Occurrence == Voiced velar bunched approximant ==

Some languages have a velar approximant that is produced with the body of the tongue bunched up at the velum and simultaneous pharyngealization. This gives rise to a type of retroflex resonance that is nearly indistinguishable from . The extension to the IPA recommends the use of the centralized diacritic, , to distinguish the bunched realization from the articulation . Typically, the diacritic is omitted, so that the sound is transcribed simply with or as if it were a coronal consonant. In Dutch, this type of r is called 'Gooi r. It is named after het Gooi, a region of the Netherlands where Hilversum (the main centre for television and radio broadcasting) is located. One source is quoted as claiming a typical realization of this sound (in particular, the further back uvular ) as a pre-uvular approximant' . Features Features of a voiced velar bunched approximant: The body of the tongue is bunched up at the velum, rather than just approaching it as it is the case with the prototypical velar approximant. Occurrence == Relation with and ==

Some languages have a voiced velar approximant that is unspecified for rounding, and therefore cannot be considered the semivocalic equivalent of either or its rounded counterpart . Examples of such languages are Catalan, Galician and Spanish, in which the approximant consonant (not semivowel) unspecified for rounding appears as an allophone of . Eugenio Martínez Celdrán describes the voiced velar approximant consonant as follows: There is a parallel problem with transcribing palatal approximants. In broad transcription, the lowering diacritic may be omitted, so that the symbol is rendered as with the corresponding fricative. ==See also==