Talk:Voiced labial–velar approximant

German "w"

Might be worth pointing out that the German "w" is labiodental and thus different from the English "w" - also, examples? (131.130.121.106 11:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC))

German is illustrated at Labiodental approximant.

Monkbel has restored Belarusian ŭ, but without providing support. It only seems to be used in diphthongs, such as aŭ, eŭ, oŭ, and thus might be better characterized as a semivowel [u̯] than as an approximant [w]. kwami 11:09, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Discussion takes place at Talk:Short U. --Monkbel 14:46, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

It is [baʊ̯ɐ] (Bauer). There is no [w] in German. A German native speaker has to learn to do it by saying a German-W [v] and making his mouth like U [uː]. 2003:D3:E722:8300:6DC7:6906:4891:C7D5 (talk) 17:24, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

So I deleted it 2003:D3:E717:7500:50C9:D574:315E:D863 (talk) 17:25, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Two Questions

It says that the sound is the "voiced labiovelar (actually labialized velar) approximant". So shouldn't the article be moved to the "voiced labialized velar approximant" and have a redirect of this title ("Voiced labial-velar approximant") to it? I think having the correct term for the title is important.

Second, in the English pronunciation part of the graph I took the liberty to change the highighted (bolded) part to the "w" instead of the double "e"'s ("ee"). If this is incorrect please change it. Thank you. 98.27.171.83 (talk) 14:53, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Consistent descriptions

The title of the article is "Voiced labial-velar approximant". What is the significance of "labial-velar" as opposed to "labio-velar"? For comparison, the article on /wh/ is entitled "Voiceless labio-velar approximant". IMHO, we should combine the adjectives consistently, whether as "labio-velar" or as "labialised velar" - oops!, "labialized velar". yoyo (talk) 17:42, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The official IPA chart says "labialized velar." Have we gone from this in order to be neutral as to whether the labial aspects is secondary or coarticulataive? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:17, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The IPA chart in the article shows "w" as one of three "Co-articulated approximants". We should describe it in the standard way, and of course, not try to be "neutral" about matters of fact! Is there truly an open question about whether this sound is a co-articulation, in which the lip-rounding and the velar approximation are equally important features? If we follow the IPA standards - and we should, else we would clearly be doing "original research", thus violating the NOR guideline - we should change each and every description of the "w" sound in this article - including in its title - to "labialized velar approximant". yoyo (talk) 18:40, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

this article has a bit about variations in the pronunciation of /w/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:16, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Portuguese

Too bad there are never given any more but one examples. Currently, we've got água. However I think it would be much better to denote the difference between Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil). In Brazil, for instance, the common surname da Silva is pronounced [dɐˈsiwvɐ] OR (!) [dɐˈsiʊ̯vɐ] (don't ask, for me it sounds the same), whilst in Portugal, they'd pronounce it [dɐˈsiɫvɐ]. -andy 77.190.53.199 (talk) 19:40, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

please add the following sound file to the article

File:Voiced labio-velar approximant.ogg --> /EsB (talk) 09:17, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

What's the velar element?

I'm a native English speaker and my pronunciation of w only seems to involve rounding the lips; my tongue doesn't move at all and I can even move it around whilst saying "wawawa" without any problem, so I'm having trouble seeing why this is categorised as labio-velar. Have I just been mispronouncing the sound all my life? I sincerely doubt it, especially since even after experimenting I don't see how raising the back of the tongue could improve the sound. But then why is this called labio-velar? --92.147.116.199 (talk) 22:56, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree. I had similar thoughts about alveolar approximants, which seem velar to me. Maybe there are different ways of pronouncing the sound.Madeleined2 (talk) 21:13, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

: Alevo-velar approximant?

The traditional English "w" definitely has a velar element. The sound that you pronounce seems to be [β], the voiced bilabial approximant. I also use this sound for English "w", but I'm German. To my own ears the two sounds are practically indistinguishable. When I listen very closely to the recordings, I do hear a difference, but in practice I couldn't tell it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.206.131.253 (talk) 16:35, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Nope, that is completely different, closer to a V. I agree with OP IP, there's no tongue for [w].  Nixinova   T   C   19:24, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

If that were true, English /w/ would be a bilabial approximant. The tongue is involved in the production of the sound (by approaching the velum, where /k/ and /ɡ/ are produced) as much as the lips are. The bilabial approximant exists in some dialects of English as a positional allophone of /b/. It is also very often the ending point of diphthongal variants of the GOOSE vowel (transcribed with ⟨ʉ⟩, with or without the non-syllabic diacritic), but that varies from dialect to dialect (it's obviously not when the second element is more prominent, in which case it is a full vowel [ʉ]). If you used the bilabial approximant for /w/ (or /v/), that'd be as much of a speech disorder as using [v] or [ʋ] for /w/. Sol505000 (talk) 10:55, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

After staring in the mirror for 5min I can say that I can make it velar but that's not my normal pronunciation of it which is just the tongue being bunched back a bit.  Nixinova   T   C   22:33, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

That "bunched back a bit" is the velar element. It's bunched up by the velum. — kwami (talk) 03:23, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

I think I sometimes do something closer to [ʋ̟] honestly, that'd be it.  Nixinova   T   C   03:16, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

In the Ukrainian language

I've removed the instance of the occurrence of the labio-velar in the Ukrainian language as it simply does not occur (unless it is a speech impediment, which approximates pronouncing 'r' as a 'w' in the English language). The only form of 'v' in the Ukrainian languages is 'v'. Please present sources for having added the occurrence in the Ukrainian language other than old Galician dialect which occurred occasionally in some regions as the result of Polish and Ukrainians living cheek-by-jowl. WP:RS, not imagination, please. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 07:39, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Finnish

There is no mention of Finnish, which has a labio-velar approximant in the middle of words such as [ˈkiuwːɑs], which is especially interesting and noteworthy because it's one of the few sounds not shown in Finnish spelling. In fact, it's even missing from the article on Finnish phonology. --Espoo (talk) 15:30, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Belgian/Flemish pronunciation of the grapheme /w/

As a native speaker of this particular dialect I must say that I have never heard it being pronounced this way by a native from whichever province. If one would pronounce it this way in Belgium (Flanders) he would be taken for a francophone speaker (meaning there is a clear distinction between the french [w] and the flemish [β̞]) or perhaps a speaker from Suriname, since the native realization of the grapheme /w/ would indeed always be [w] in this dialect.

It is also not true that the [w] realization is considered as a standard pronunciation. If a news reader (in Flanders, as in many parts of the world I presume, they are considered to be the most refined speakers of the language and they adhere to a strict norm of standard Belgian Dutch) would pronounce the /w/ in words like welp,water,wassen or meeuwen he or she would be frowned upon at the least and her pronunciation would be considered extremely odd and non-native. The Belgian realization of this phoneme is exactly what this article states as its dialectal pronunciation and this is nationwide.

It is in fact the voiced bilabial approximant [β̞] that is used by any speaker I have met from West Flanders to Limburg (having resided in all of the 5 Dutch speaking provinces). It is the exact same sound as the Spanish /b/,/v/ in the non initial position, like in pavo for example. I will edit this in the article. If there are any objections, any person can annul my contribution. However, any native speaker from this area would tell you the same. Even if he weren't a linguist. Far too often have I seen that native speakers have psychologically accepted that a certain phoneme is pronounced a certain way on paper, not realizing it isn't. For example, in our schoolbooks the so called "right" pronunciation of this particular is noted as the labiodental approximant [ʋ] which is only native to the Netherlands and pretty far away from the flemish [β̞]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.226.96.15 (talk) 10:11, August 1, 2015

You are right that the bilabial approximant is the sound used in Flemish and also, post-consonantally, by some Dutch and German speakers. However, this is not the sound used for Spanish b, v, which is a bilabial fricative, not approximant.

Well, usually fricative. I now see that it may also be an approximant for some speakers. In Germanic, it's always approximant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.188.186.58 (talk) 14:59, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 24 May 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved per nom (sigh). I wish we had more input, but this is long overdue to close. While I'm reasonably familiar with the topic, the discussion drifted far away into technical matters. The IPA chart argument is persuasive enough, and since we keep our naming [mostly] consistent with IPA, there we go. No such user (talk) 08:52, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

---

• Voiced labialized-velar approximant → Voiced labial–velar approximant
• Voiced labialized palatal approximant → Voiced labial–palatal approximant
• Voiceless labialized velar approximant → Voiceless labial–velar fricative
• Voiceless labialized palatal fricative → Voiceless labial–palatal fricative

– [w], [ʍ] and [ɥ] appear under the proposed names on the IPA chart.^†

The articles about plosives were boldly moved from "stop" to "plosive" to make them in line with the IPA terminology last year (which I welcome and which was approved implicitly by others in this RM), yet the same user who moved the plosive articles reverted the proposed moves, saying "not coarticulated, but 2ary articulation".

Although some instances of the sounds discussed may indeed be more accurately described as labialized velar/palatal than as co-articulated from a purely phonetic point of view, we do not know if this is true in all languages reported to have these sounds. When an underdocumented language is reported to have e.g. /w/ in its inventory and that's all we have to go by, there's no way to tell if it's better described as labialized velar or velarized labial, and if our article on [w] is named one way, we have no choice but to include that information either in no article about a phonetic sound or in the one named "labialized velar", which is misleading to readers at best and misrepresentative of the source at worst. Naming our articles using broader categories allows us to represent reliable sources more flexibly and thus more accurately.

In fact that's what we already do in these articles about phonetic sounds. We might not know the exact specific phonetic configurations for each sound reported, but using the broad taxonomic categories employed by the IPA, we can stick to what's reported in our sources and provide finer language-specific details where available. This was also the motive for merging articles about "voiceless approximants", a category not all linguists accept, which made it impossible to classify some reports of sounds emphatically as either approximant or fricative.

Moreover, the IPA defines the value of each letter not by specific physical attributes but by broad categories informed by the distinctive feature theory (IPA Handbook, pp. 37–8), and "[w] in one language might be revealed to be a velarized labial because it alternates with [b], yet be pronounced identically to [w] in another language that is revealed to be a labialized velar because it alternates with [g]" (Zsiga 2020: 122).

† Except the IPA chart uses hyphens, not en dashes. The proposed names are consistent with the existing articles in Category:Labial–velar consonants etc. Also notice the inconsistency between the current names of the first article under discussion and the rest (hyphen vs. space). Nardog (talk) 09:55, 24 May 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. Natg 19 (talk) 01:53, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I believe you've misinterpreted Zsiga, reading diachrony as synchrony. Her statement only makes sense in the historical sense: that *b may be velarized to form [w], or *g may be labialized to form the same, as in different branches of IE. (Or even as a merger within a language.) But that has nothing to do with the topic here, which is about physical articulation. (Otherwise we'd need to sometimes classify [h] as an alveolar sibilant.) A plain labial–velar approximant is [β͡ɰ] and a labialized velar approximant is [ɰʷ]. Zsiga is clearly not claiming that those are her two w's, since she says "pronounced identically".

You may have a point about [w], but Ladefoged opined that labial–velar and labial–palatal fricatives are implausible (in that they can be produced, but that it is impractical to make such sounds, they are not known to occur in any language and probably don't). Also, AFAICT, [ɥ] is always a consonantal [y], and like [y] is labialized, not labial–palatal. So, even if [w] should be moved to address your concerns, the others should not be.

— kwami (talk) 10:47, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

No, she's definitely talking synchronically. The quote is from her summary of Anderson (1981), who gives examples of phonologically "labialized velar" and "velarized labial" [w]. Zsiga contrasts Anderson with opposing views, but that the same sound may be different phonologically across languages per se is never questioned and is reiterated rather matter-of-factly.

We're talking about classification, which need not exactly correspond to physical articulation, which is sometimes impossible to pin down in reliable sources. Even Ladefoged & Maddieson do use the terms "labial–velar" and "labial–palatal" as relate to approximants, e.g. pp. 322ff. We also have Voiceless glottal fricative where it is, even though Ladefoged considered it an approximant, because that's what the IPA calls it.

We merged "voiceless approximant" articles into the fricative counterparts following the discussion with RoachPeter at Talk:Voiceless labialized velar approximant because, as I noted above, not all linguists accept that there are such things as voiceless approximants (the IPA certanly doesn't seem to, given the definition of ⟨ʍ⟩ on the official chart), and even if we took the position that there are, it would be impossible to decide whether a report belongs in the fricative article or the approximant one when there's no instrumental study that says it's one or the other, or when it's "difficult to decide", as even Ladefoged & Maddieson say it is in some cases at least when it comes to laterals (p. 199). If we left the [ʍ] article alone, it would be the only one named "Voiceless ... approximant". Nardog (talk) 12:14, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

"that the same sound may be different phonologically" -- well, of course. But if they're the "same sound", they're not different sounds. The IPA is not concerned with phonology.

Many of the names are old, and have not been changed because there's not been any agreement to do so. The IPA did not originally have a distinction between approximant and fricative. (And also per SOWL [h] *is* a fricative in some languages, like Arabic.) But the [ʍ] was intended for the English wh, and no-one who has the witch–which distinction pronounces the latter as [xʷɪtʃ] with a velar fricative. To imply it is a fricative just because the IPA names are dated would be misleading to our readers. People are confused enough by the IPA as it is. — kwami (talk) 12:41, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

I concur. --Thnidu (talk) 05:16, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

That doesn't make sense. The term "approximant" first appeared on the IPA chart more than 40 years ago (and "frictionless continuant" roughly 90 years ago). If they considered the value of ⟨ʍ⟩ to be an approximant, they've had a plenty of chances to correct the record. And they haven't. In the future the IPA Council may very well vote to redefine symbols in a way that accepts "voiceless approximants" as a category. But until then, as discussed in Approximant#Voiceless approximants, the situation remains that the IPA chart and some phoneticians (including some former IPA Presidents) don't accept it, and we have duty to WP:NPOV and WP:CRYSTAL. Nardog (talk) 05:13, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

There's also common sense. If we say the IPA has a symbol for a sound in English that doesn't occur in English, we're reduced to gibberish.

Because of [ɥ̊], we'd need to claim that the ring diacritic does not indicate just voicelessness, but also frication, as it changes an approximate to a fricative. That conflicts with the definition by the IPA.

For the ʍ article, we'd need to remove the English examples and probably quite a few of the others, and substitute languages that have [xʷ]. I don't see how that would improve WP.

As for sources that deny the existence of voiceless semivowels, do they also deny the existence of voiceless vowels? Wouldn't they also have to be (syllabic) fricatives? — kwami (talk) 22:31, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

We wouldn't have to remove anything because English /ʍ/ is, to those who do not admit voiceless approximants, a fricative. So we can simply keep the sounds described as approximants by those who admit them and say they are so described by those who admit them. Look at Voiceless dental and alveolar lateral fricatives etc. where we already do this.

Ohala & Solé (2010: 43) said: Approximants, e.g. [ʋ j w l ɹ ɻ], and nasals, which by definition are non-obstruents, are usually voiced. When voiceless, however, without any variation in the configuration of the oral articulators, they can become fricative (and thus obstruents), e.g. [f ç ʍ ɸ ɬ ɹ̥ ʂ] and [m̥ n̥ ɲ̥ ŋ̊], respectively. This happens simply due to the increased airflow passing through the constriction created by these consonants – the increased airflow being caused by the greater opening (and thus lesser resistance to airflow) at the glottis.

Wells also wrote in 2009: One problem with classifying [h] as an approximant is that voiceless approximants are by definition inaudible. (Or by one definition, at least. Approximants used to be known as "frictionless continuants".) If there's no friction and no voicing, there's nothing to hear. Anything you can hear during a voiceless [h] must be some sort of weak friction, resulting from some sort of weak turbulence, which means that [h] is some sort of weak fricative — but still a fricative.

Also see Akamatsu (1992: 30): I will dismiss out of hand as simply wrong Ladefoged's reference to the second segment in [pr̥ei] pray, [tr̥ai] try or [kr̥ai] cry as a voiceless approximant. The second segment in question is a fricative (cf. Gimson 1989: 208), not an approximant. And O'Connor (1973: 61): There are no voiceless frictionless continuants because this would imply silence; the voiceless counterpart of the frictionless continuant is the voiceless fricative.

Ohala and Wells are former IPA Presidents. I would hardly call 2009 or 2010 "old". The English /ʍ/ is also described as a "voiceless labial–velar fricative" as recently as 2019 by Collins, Mees & Carley, a popular phonetics intro textbook in the UCL tradition. There simply isn't an agreement in reliable sources that the English sound is an approximant or that such a category as "voiceless approximants" is admissible.

If you don't like this situation, lobby the IPA Council. Or ask linguists around to write that they think it should be in publications that count as RSes if you're impatient. But Wikipedia strives for verifiable accuracy and a neutral point of view, and we would be giving undue weight if we took it for granted that there are such things as voiceless approximants. Nardog (talk) 10:30, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Then we can't use ⟨ʍ⟩ for English, or use English as an example of a language with the sound. Which I don't mind -- it's a redundant letter and per IPA principles shouldn't be in the alphabet to begin with.

The IPA Handbook gives Scots as an example of a language with [ʍ], and The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language states that an older pronunciation of Scots wh is "xʍ" -- that is, as an actual fricative. So (older) Scots is fine as an example, though we'd need a note that it is rare to use ⟨ʍ⟩ for [xʷ] for other languages (e.g. in the Caucasus or the American Pacific Northwest, though you do see it occasionally). But The Edinburgh History also describes /ʍ/ regionally as a semivowel, so we'd need to specify which dialect of Scots has a fricative. We'd also need a note that the IPA label implies that [ʍ] is instead [ɸ͡x], which has been given as value of Swedish /ɧ/ but, as Ladefoged explained, is unlikely to actually occur in any language.

Also, per the arguments against voiceless approximants you gave above, voiceless vowels are syllabic fricatives, which, forgive me, is just stupid. — kwami (talk) 19:27, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Support These are articles about two different things but with a title for one of those things; logically, we should have a title that includes both of those things (not to mention the proposal is how the IPA calls it). That being said, I cannot admit to understand most of the discussion/rationale other than that (and the fact that voiceless approximants don't exist so we shouldn't have an article on them), so I would appreciate it if Nardog could explain it in a bit simpler terms. Zoozaz1 talk 13:00, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

That's pretty much it. Except perhaps it's not so much that they're about two different things but rather that the same thing, or more or less the same thing, can be classified in one of several ways depending on who you ask, and the proposed names are the most neutral or comprehensive ones. And most articles about phonetic sounds (linked in IPA chart, Template:IPA navigation, Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Infobox IPA, etc.) are already named and organized according to the way the IPA does it after all. And it's not so much that voiceless approximants don't exist but their status as a category discrete from voiceless fricatives is disputed (in other words, some linguists think they exist, and others don't). Nardog (talk) 13:15, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Common

According to this: OSF | Prevalence rates for phonemes in world languages the w occurs in 84% of all languages. Shouldn't the fact it's that common be mentioned in the lead? Wikifan153 (talk) 14:24, 10 August 2024 (UTC)