The voiced 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 g, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is g.
Features
Features of the voiced velar plosive:
Varieties of [g]
In English, the sound /g/ is denoted by the letter 'g' as in gum or bag. However, the letter 'g' does not always denote the sound /g/. When followed by 'i' or 'e' or preceded by 'd' it sometimes denotes the affricate /dʒ/, as in gin and judgement. When preceded by 'n' and occurring at the end of a morpheme, it often becomes the digraph 'ng', which denotes the velar nasal, as in singer and rung, but not finger.
In other languages
The [g] sound is a common sound cross-linguistically. Many languages have at least a plain [g], and some distinguish more than variety. Many Indian languages, such as Hindi, have a two-way contrast between aspirated (breathy voice) and plain [g].
See also
Last updated: 08-19-2006 14:43:24
