The voiceless labial–velar plosive or stop is a type of

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

al sound, used in some spoken

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s. It is a and pronounced simultaneously and is considered a double articulation. To make this sound, one can say ''Coe'' but with the lips closed as if one were saying ''Poe''; the lips are to be released at the same time as or a fraction of a second after the ''C'' of ''Coe''. The symbol in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

that represents this sound is . The voiceless labial–velar plosive is found in Vietnamese and various languages in West and Central Africa. In the orthography of Yoruba in Nigeria it is written with a simple .

Features

Features of the voiceless labial–velar stop:

Occurrence

Rounded variant

Some languages, especially in

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and in

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, combine this voiceless labial–velar stop with a labial–velar approximant release, hence . Thus Mwotlap ( Banks Islands, north

) has ('my father-in-law'). In the Banks Islands languages which have it, the phoneme is written in local

orthographies An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and emphasis. Most national and international languages have an established writing syst ...

. In other languages of

further south (such as South Efate, or Lenakel), the same segment is spelled .

Notes

References

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External links