Talk:Voiced velar fricative

In Spanish?

I have two books phonetics that say that the sound occurs as an allophone of /g/ in Spanish. Svenskans fonologi by Claes Garlén (pg. 87, 210) and Fonetikens grunder by Olle Engstrand (pg. 148).

Peter ^Isotalo 04:03, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

Would you specify the dialect? This isn't the case for Mexican Spanish, nor for any other variety of Spanish I've heard (not that I've heard that many), nor for the standard dialects used by the Spanish-language phonologies I've read, nor for the sources used by the Spanish phonology article in Wikipedia, nor it is mentioned as a variant in the Spanish dialects and varieties article, etc.

However, it is extremely common for basic phonetics textbooks to get this wrong, just as Hebrew and Arabic are commonly but erroneously claimed to have voiced pharyngeal fricatives, perhaps because for a long time the velar fricative symbol pulled double duty for the approximant, as the pharyngeal symbol still does, and when people see the gamma, they just assume it means "fricative". (An example is Daniels & Bright, The World's Writing Systems, which shows a [ɣ]. However, their phonetics generally isn't very accurate.) Or else a book will simply use a gamma, without bothering to say that they're using it to represent an approximant. Anyway, the blanket statement that "In Spanish, [ɣ] occurs as an intervocalic allophone of /g/" is wrong. kwami 07:25, 2005 Jun 7 (UTC)

There's a sound sample of the allophone in Fonetikens grunder (written in 2004, btw) on the publishers webpage. It's a European Spanish rendition of el carro de Rodriguez, which is transcribed as [el 'kar:o ðe roðɾiɣeθ]: wav-file. It is used to illustrate the differences in /r/-realizations foremost, but also to show how the voiced plosives /b, d, g/ are realized as fricatives that are leaning towards approximants. The exact same feature is present in Portuguese and Catalan, which are both included in the IPA handbook and are described as fricatives. Galician shows similar allophones except that they seem to be decidedly approximantic. This is also described in the handbook. Whatever the situation of the whole fricative/approximant situation is, it is either not accepted by all phoneticians or you might be extrapolating the theories too far.

Since you're questioning the use confirmed by some really heavy duty sources here, could you please tell me what your competence for these kinds of assertions are? Are you a trained phonetician? Have you studied phonetics on an academic level? I know I haven't, and that's why I'm do not try to assert my own analyses over that of serious phonetic literature and the authority of the IPA.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:00, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

And about the Arabic and Hebrew, are you aware that both languages have phonologies in the IPA handbook and both are assigned pharyngeal fricatives? There is indeed a tendency for voiced fricatives (and plosives) to be realized as approximants in colloquial speech, but the way you describe it makes it sound as if the approximants are simply the "true sounds" with the rest being some kind of historically backward compromises in dire need of being cleansed. Again, I think you're exceeding your competence in these matters.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:19, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

No, in the Handbook, neither Arabic nor Hebrew is described as having a voiced pharyngeal fricative. Take a look at the charts: each language has only a single (voiceless) phoneme [ħ] in that cell. The Arabic ayn is described as being a pharyngealized glottal stop, [ʔˁ], whereas the Hebrew ayn is described as being a pharyngeal approximant, and is placed in the approximant row of the chart. This is despite the fact that both Arabic and Hebrew are transcribed using the symbol ʕ. That is, in the IPA's own handbook, the symbol ʕ is not reliably a fricative!

True, European Portuguese is described as having a voiced velar fricative allophone for /g/. However, in Galician, which is basically a northern Portuguese dialect that's been influenced by Spanish, it says that "they have approximant variants [β̞ ð̞ ɰ]". Also, in Catalan, although the fricative symbol ɣ is used, it's then specified as being an approximant, not a fricative! The exact words are, "The three voiced plosives have approximant variants [β], [ð], [ɣ] in onset positions ..." That is, it seems that Catalan is just like Galician. Actually, thanks for pointing that out: it shows that none of the voiced fricative symbols can be relied upon to be fricatives, even in official IPA usage.

I've checked out your sample, but the segment is so short it's hard to tell what it is. It's not obviously a fricative (though not obviously an approximant either). I've looked at it in Praat, and there is no trace of frication in the spectrogram up to 7700 Hz, after which the signal has been filtered out. The waveform is just slightly irregular, but not what I'd expect from a fricative. What it looks like to me is a voiced plosive with very little occlusion -- which isn't a bad definition for an approximant. However, there's enough background noise that I wouldn't want to swear just from this soundfile that it's not a fricative.

I have studied phonetics at a graduate level, though I'm certainly not a phonetician. However, I've seen enough inaccuracies and inconsistancies in reputable sources that I'm leery of claims that aren't corroborated by laboratory measurements. Good linguists miss the lateral flap all the time, for instance, simply because they aren't trained to hear it. (That's the r sound in Japanese and the l in much of West Africa.) Also, when giving a phonemic breakdown of a language, it's very common to take a "good enough" attitude. Often a linguist's aim will be to show the phonemic contrasts, and isn't particularly concerned about the exact phonetic realizations of those phonemes. There's even a common attitude in Chomskyan circles that language description isn't a worthwhile endeavor, that it's the theory that matters. As for there being historical residues "in dire need of being cleansed", I do believe that. French /t/ is almost always described as being dental, for example, even though it's alveolar, because that's the convention. (It's just laminal, unlike English, where /t/ is apical.)

I must say that, at least in Mexican and Central American Spanish, I've never noticed a velar fricative. When I pronounce the sound as an approximant, people compliment my pronunciation. This is in marked contrast to Cairene Arabic or Dutch, where the frication is unmistakable. That's why I think Arabic is a good example of a velar fricative, but Spanish is not. (There's a question as to whether the Arabic sound is velar or uvular, but I believe that's a dialectical issue.) Perhaps Castillian Spanish does have a fricative - that I wouldn't know. Or it may be accurate to say that there is slight frication in all Spanish dialects. But at least in Mexico, it's nowhere near a prototypical fricative as it is in some Dutch and Arabic dialects.

Would that be a fair compromise? That the Spanish allophone is often described as a fricative, but it's closer to being an approximant, although perhaps with some frication? kwami 07:00, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

I will second the observation that it tends to be phonetically naïve linguistics texts that describe Spanish intervocalic voiced stops as fricatives. They are in fact approximants, which may under certain conditions (like any approximant) be lightly fricated. Using the unmodified symbols for fricatives β and ð may make one come to the erroneous conclusion that there are a set of fricatives in spanish [β], [v], [ð], [z], [ɣ] whose production is contrasted only by place of articulation. In fact [β], [ð], [ɣ] are produced as approximants that are lightly fricated (if at all), but [z] as in de[z]de is a full fricative (I can't think of any examples with /f/ followed by a voiced consonant (there may not in fact be one, but if there were it would be pronounced as a fully fricated [v]).

Most details descriptions of Spanish phonetics I have seen include the "lowered" diacritic underneath β and ð (β̞ and ð̞). For the velar, some use ɣ̞ and others use ɰ (the velar approximant). The difficulty is that the IPA gives no symbols for bilabial and dental approximants, but it does have a symbol for a velar approximant. Some writers have taken this gap in the IPA to be significant: that the phonetic realizations of intervocalic [b, d, g] should be transcribed using an analogous set of symbols; and since there are no symbols for the bilabial and dental approximants, then one should use the symbols for the fricatives with the "lowered" diacritic, signifying less (or no) frication. Others simply view the gap as merely an oversight and use the symbol for the velar approximant that is available (ɰ) and "make do" with the symbols for fricatives with a diacritic for the other two.

Ideally, there would be IPA symbols for the bilabial approximant and the dental approximant, or at the very least there would be a diacritic that explicitly means "no turbulent airflow (frication)". That would make for an easy solution for an orthogonal set of symbols to transcribe these allophones. The sections of the chart where such symbols would go are white (not shaded) indicating that the IPA considers them to be possible articulations, just not ones which have been assigned symbols. The topic I gather is something of a sore spot in Spanish phonetics and there has probably been some pressure on the IPA to assign symbols to these sounds. However, there are certain elements of the IPA that labor under the conceit that the alphabet is actually a kind of universal phonemic alphabet, and if no language distinguishes bilabial fricatives and approximants or dental fricatives and approximants, then diacritics will suffice for transcribing these sounds.

Given that, there is another general principle for the use of the IPA that diacritics can be excluded if the level of phonetic detail doesn't necessitate them. Thus ɣ is a perfectly valid transcription for intervocalic /g/ in Spanish because one can work under the assumption that the essential difference between g and ɣ is that ɣ is a continuant and g is not. It may not be the case that use of a fricative symbol necessarily implies turbulent airflow. But then again it might—it's all very vaguely defined.

In sum, both ɣ̞ and ɰ are used to transcribe intervocalic /g/ in Spanish. There are benefits and drawbacks to both methods, as the IPA doesn't provide a "best" solution. The sound is not fricated like /s/ and /f/ (or [z] and [v] for that matter), but is very lightly fricated if at all.

As for whether this page should include Spanish among the examples, I am ambivalent. At the very least, we could mention that some phonetic descriptions of Spanish give the symbol for the "voiced velar fricative" for the sound /g/ in the environment where it is weakened, but there is little or no turbulent airflow and most detailed descriptions of Spanish phonetics use instead the symbol for the velar approximant. Nohat 08:50, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

P.S. I know the environment is not strictly intervocalic, but that's not important for this discussion.

From Nohat's post There are benefits and drawbacks to both methods, as the IPA doesn't provide a "best" solution.

This is exactly what I was trying to say. IPA, though pretty detailed all things considered, is a compromise. It's more precise than your standard language orthography, but can never be precise enough to cover every imaginable deviation or minor detail. This is the essence of this discussion and I think kwami is being very unreasonable about a lot his edits.

kwami, you're making a lot of edits that seem to be based on the perception that there is One True Version, which needless to say, is quite obviously not NPOV. Please don't be so eager to completely assert your views on the articles you edit. You're attempting to oversimplify very complicated issues and you're doing it in a very aggressive manner to boot. Please try to be a bit more open to criticism.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:01, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

I thought the idea was to describe the International Phonetic Alphabet? I hardly see a problem with trying to be accurate. Spanish does not have a velar fricative. It has a velar approximant. Taking an attitude of "fricative, approximant, what's the difference?" is doing a disservice to those of our readers who are trying to figure out what the difference is. If you wish to use gamma when describing Spanish, because you're only trying to capture the phonemic essentials and don't care about the phonetic details, fine. But Spanish as an example of a velar fricative is wrong. The same for [c], which is commonly used to represent an affricate in Indic languages. Using Hindi as an example of [c] would also be wrong, though a note that this is common usage would be appropriate. As Nohat said, approximants are often slightly (and sometimes not so slightly) fricated, e.g. in emphatic usage. Should I give English as an example of a language with a voiced palatal fricative, just because when I say "Yes, indeed!" with the right emphasis, the 'y' is slightly fricated? That's a comment for the approximant article. I was hoping that you would correct the comment on Spanish yourself, but since you won't, I will. kwami 18:14, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

I'm a Spanish phonetician, and I completely agree that the Spanish intervocalic 'g' (as well as in the combinations vowel+gr or gl+vowel and some others) is pronounced in all dialects (European and American) as an aproximant, not as a fricative. I've heard our 'soft g' in Danish and Icelandic. This being said, the same happens with northern Portuguese dialects, Galician and, most importantly (since it's normative) Catalan. So I'm afraid these should be removed from the list, if the article wants to be about the velar fricative strictu sensu. Vicente Sans, México

I'm sorry if I came across as being overly critical, but your somewhat high handed attitude is quite taxing on one's patience considering that you're making a lot of edits that are downright reckless and to some extent even erroneous. I appreciate your input, but please try to tone down your own POV and try to balance your views with established use. Most importantly, though, show some proper respect when discussing. Right now you're resorting to quite petty and low-level rhetorical feints and quite obvious incivility. This degrades you as much as it does me, so please try to stick to factual discussion.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:43, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for being rude, Peter. I would have worded things differently if I'd waited a day. I think this has taxed both of our patience. kwami 21:36, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

I've always thought that in Spanish, there's the following phonological rules:

• /b/ 'b/v' -> [β] / [+sonorant] _ [+sonorant]
• /d/ 'd' -> [ð] / [+son] _ [+son]
• and /g/ 'g/gu' -> [ɣ] / [+son] _ [+son]

All of the voiced stops, in other words, become voiced fricatives intervocalically and in other voiced environments. Examples are 'cada' ['kaða], 'cabeza' [ka'βesa] or [ka'βeθa], 'ave' ['aβe], 'ciego' ['sjeɣo] or ['θjeɣo], sigue ['siɣe]. True (talk) 19:09, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I think something like this is more accurate.

• /b/ 'b/v' -> [β] / [-nasal] _
• /d/ 'd' -> [ð] / [-nasal | -lateral] _
• and /g/ 'g/gu' -> [ɣ] / [+son] _ Anom998 (talk) 12:11, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Is f in Spanish afgano pronounced as [v]? Can't think of any other example where f precedes a voiced consonant that contrasts with an unvoiced version (I suspect that the fact that /f/ remains voiceless before /l/ and /ɾ/ is connected with the fact that these have no unvoiced counterparts). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:03, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't know. I suspect it's [avɣano], but here[1] it's [afgano]. Don't know if that's just an effect of clear enunciation for the recording. — kwami (talk) 20:13, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't sound right

The sound sample doesn't sound right. My name is pronounced like this, and according to Dutch_language#Consonants, it is the Voiced velar fricative. However, this sound sample sounds clearly softer than the way we pronounce it in Dutch. Where does this sound sample come from? Gerrit ^CUTEDH 20:57, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Please note that I'm not a linguist, so I can't really follow the discussion above. I don't know the technical words, I don't know what a voiced velar fricative is, I just know that the sound I hear is not like my name, but it still is linked in the Dutch language article as if it is! Gerrit ^CUTEDH 21:01, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Footnote #3 on the Dutch consonant chart might explain the discrepancy: for most Dutch speakers, 'g' is pronounced [x], not [ɣ], at least when it's the first sound in a word. (For some speakers it's only [ɣ] between vowels.) Why don't you listen to the sound at Voiceless velar fricative and tell us if that sounds better? Also, before the vowel [e], the sound might be closer to a Voiceless palatal fricative; the velar might only occur near "back" vowels like [a, o, u]. If these sounds are still off, then we might have some work to do. kwami 22:08, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to be the right sound clip at all. In fact it's not velar or a fricative. It seems to be the voiced alveolar sibilant (aka z). The people above seem to at least have heard something similar (x or ɦ or?). I haven't edited any articles using sound files, so I don't know if this could be a technical difficulty or if it's just a plain misplaced file. Mathlaura (talk) 16:43, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

This one? It's both velar and a fricative. Peter238 (talk) 16:46, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Greek letter gamma?

Current version says the IPA symbol "ɣ" is the "Greek letter gamma". In contrast, the Unicode code charts have this character as U+0263 LATIN SMALL LETTER GAMMA [2], distinguished from "γ" U+03B3 GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA [3]. Would it be more correct to say the IPA symbol is a variant of the Greek gamma? Stebulus 04:56, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

No responses, I guess. I say it's a variant. Updating page accordingly. Stebulus 00:32, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I would call it. Ƶ§œš¹ ^{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 02:04, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Not in Czech

[ɣ] does not occur in Czech at all AFAIK. When /x/ is surrounded by a voiced consonant, as in abych byl, it is pronounced [ɦ], not [ɣ]. I have just removed it from the table. --Imploder 19:24, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

it probably depends on dialect. I definitely pronounce [ɣ] in it, not [ɦ].

icelandic

Please add Icelandic... although it's almost an approximant in icelandic.--Sonjaaa 04:03, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Velar or uvular?

I removed the Burushaski and Lakhota examples because these languages have the voiced uvular fricative and lack the velar one. I bet there are lots more such examples still in the list; I especially suspect the Iranian and Turkic ones. David Marjanović 21:35, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Better yet: in front of /i/, the Lakhota /ʁ/ becomes [ʀ]. [ɣi] and [ʀi] are not easy to confuse. David Marjanović 21:37, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

In Danish?

I've heard the [ɣ] sound used after [l], [ʁ] and vowels in Danish--mostly from older speakers, or in very careful formal style. (For instance, my literature professor in college--a man in his 50s--said [ˈeŋəbɔʁɣ] when he called on me; my younger Danish friends would simply drop the last sound.) Most of the textbooks I learned from (printed as late as the 1970s) also list [ɣ] as a sound of the language, even though it seems to be dying out nowadays. With the recent developments in mind, would adding Danish examples to the list still be justified? -- Ingeborg S. Nordén 03:29, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, maybe put a note that it occurs mostly with older speakers. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:36, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Done. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 19:03, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

In Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Northern Portuguese

I'm a Spanish phonetician, and I completely agree that the Spanish intervocalic 'g' (as well as in the combinations vowel+gr or gl+vowel and some others) is pronounced in all dialects (European and American) as an aproximant, not as a fricative. I've heard our 'soft g' in Danish and Icelandic. This being said, the same happens with northern Portuguese dialects, Galician and, most importantly (since it's normative) Catalan. So I'm afraid these should be removed from the list, if the article wants to be about the velar fricative strictu sensu. Vicente Sans, México

In Moldavian accent of Romanian

In at least the southern part of Moldavia, this sound replace 'v' of the literary language, in certains cases. (example: "vin" (wine), read literary is "vin", but in Moldavia is read "ɣin". In other areas of Moldavia (particulary Bessarabia) the transformation goes beyond, and "v" is read "ʒ". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Unuon (talk • contribs) 23:58, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Manx?

Shouldn't the Manx language be added to the table in the "Occurrence" section? Christomir (talk) 17:13, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't see why not. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:00, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Scottish Gaelic

It is also a prominent feature of Scottish Gaelic. Indeed, the sound sample given sounds exactly like 'a dha', the Gaelic for 'two'. Ceartas (talk) 01:10, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

German

The most common VVF in German is the realization of the grapheme 'r' (in many but not all dialects). I have never heard '[Ich] hege' (an uncommon verb, by the way) pronounced in this way, except perhaps by Swiss speakers, and even then it would probably not be voiced but unvoiced (Pamour (talk) 15:49, 8 November 2013 (UTC)).

'I have never heard...' is not good enough. The Austrian German example is sourced; if you disagree with it, find a source which states that there's no lenition in Austrian German. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 14:13, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, damalige sounds like an odd example to use, not very salient or frequent. In Northern/Central Germany, sagen or Vogel may be pronounced with a fricative. This is a Central and Low German feature, though rather stigmatised in Standard German. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:08, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Krech et al (2009) use that word as an example. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 23:45, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

/r/ can be [ʁ] in much of Germany, but not [ɣ].

I'm Austrian. We frankly don't do voiced fricatives; I was quite shocked to learn that [ɣ] exists when I found it described in a dictionary of Greek. I would bet that "the Austrian German example" suffers from two misunderstandings: first, the common Viennese belief that Vienna is all there is to Austria; second, the transcription of a voiceless lenis as voiced. A short voiceless [x] (remember that consonant length remains phonemic in most Upper German dialects) does indeed occur specifically in Vienna in -ig(-) because that area was settled by Franks, not just Bavarians, in the 10th century or something. 180 km to the west (where I'm from), this phenomenon is wholly unknown, and -ig(-) has a voiceless plosive [g̊] without exception. Does anybody have access to the source? David Marjanović (talk) 09:07, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

African American Vernacular English

Is it farfetched to say that [ɣ] occurs in AAVN as an allophone of [g] in unstressed syllables? Example word: "bigger" → ['bɪɣə]. Squirrelous (talk) 00:31, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

The recording isn't accurate

The pronunciation in the recording isn't accurate, it is more /z/ than voiced velar fricative. Here is an example of the consonant, in Arabic:
https://translate.google.com/?hl=iw&tab=wT#ar/en/%D8%BA%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A8 Exx8 (talk) 23:24, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're hearing in the recording in this article; it doesn't sound like [z] to me. And the ghayn in غريب as pronounced by Google Translate is just a little more back than the one in the article: in-between velar [ɣ] and uvular [ʁ]. If the recording in the article is of the velar [ɣ], the sound in Google Translate can be transcribed as velar with minus sign below, the tongue retraction diacritic, ⟨ɣ̠⟩ or uvular with a plus sign below, the tongue advancement diacritic, ⟨ʁ̟⟩. However, since it's really still velar, not quite uvular, it would usually be transcribed with the letter for the velar. — Eru·tuon 00:16, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Permission to change the voice sample?

Multiple entries on this talk page have expressed their discontent for the current voice sample of /ɣ/ on this Wikipedia page, which they say sounds closer to a /z/.

I'm also quite discontent with the voice sample, because it actually affected me negatively.

As an amateur, I enjoy learning how to pronounce the different sounds of a language, and pages like these are how I do — I rely on them, they're my go-to source for learning the IPA. I was confused when I first listened to the sample on this page, which sounds closer to a /z/. Because /ɣ/ is transliterated in many Latin-script-based languages as "gh" showing a relation with "g", why would it sound like a /z/? So for the next few months that followed, I was trying to figure out a sound that sounded like a /g/ but also like a /z/. My lack of success led me to believe that /ɣ/ was a difficult sound to pronounce, and that influenced me to try avoiding pronouncing any languages that featured /ɣ/. But one day, which happened recently, I realized it was just a voiced version of /x/, which I could easily pronounce. I was pretty thrilled that I figured it out.

In short, this voice sample was more of a hinderance than a help. It should be changed.

I have a microphone I consider adequate, and I would like to contribute an improved voice sample of /ɣ/. Do I have permission to?

Thanks.

Wiki nol ege █[:]====▶• 00:33, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi, Wiki nol ege. I agree with you entirely. The sample is on the right track, but reminds me of dictation when I was a child, with the teacher exaggerating/overemphasising sounds they knew to already be familiar to the students in order that they equate it with the correct symbol (in whichever alphabet and language they were being taught in). I'm not sure that I'd agree with its being a voiced version of /x/, but you're welcome to upload your own .ogg rendition to Wiki Commons and bring it to this talk page for discussion in order that other editors can form a consensus as to which version should be used. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 02:54, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I'd agree with its being a voiced version of /x/ Then what is it? You should take a look at the IPA chart. The letter ⟨x⟩ in the IPA denotes a voiceless velar fricative, and ⟨ɣ⟩ a voiced one. Given the use of slashes, you may be thinking of a phoneme /x/ in some language that may not always be realized as [x], but bear in mind, slashes specifically denotes that the sound enclosed is a phoneme, i.e. a distinctive unit of sounds in the phonology of a given language, not a single—phonetic—sound. The representation of a phoneme doesn't always correspond to the realization of that phoneme in all environments: for example, the English word bed, phonemically /bɛd/, when said in isolation, is, in one type of phonetic—as opposed to phonemic—transcription, [pɛt]. The sound this article is talking about, on the other hand, is a single phonetic sound, namely the voiced velar fricative. Nardog (talk) 08:21, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Hello! Here is a link to my .ogg sample on Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voicedvelarfricative-ogg.ogg Let's hope we can improve the current sample in due time!

Wiki nol ege █[:]====▶• 06:35, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry but that doesn't sound like a velar fricative at all; it sounds very much like a uvular trill, or, if you produced it at the velum, you had too much saliva in your mouth that it became a trill. A fricative, by definition, is a sound made by turbulent air, which results in a random noise, not a periodic one, so there shouldn't be a cyclical sound except for that of voicing.

The current file totally sounds like [ɣ] to me, and not like [z] at all. Compare it to the sounds on [4][5][6][7]. Which sounds more like [ɣ] heard on these sites, yours or the current one? Nardog (talk) 07:40, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Example of the sound

Hopefully this is useful for correcting the current wrong audio file: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz9Q38rmXi0 Chris Martin (talk) 19:25, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Rhotique topique

How much possibility, that voiced velar fricative “[ɣ]” is semi-rhotique? Juidzi (talk) 08:40, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not means full rhotique. Juidzi (talk) 08:41, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Rhoticity is fully dependent on language. No sound can be said to be rhotic or non-rhotic without saying in what language. Nardog (talk) 08:53, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

[ɣ] appears as one variety of /r/ in Brazilian Portuguese (where it contrasts with the alveolar tap /ɾ/ in some environments, much like the alveolar trill of Spanish and Catalan) and German (in front vowel environments). The difference between velar and uvular consonants is more of a continuum than a diachotomy, especially when it comes to the voiceless fricatives which can be fricated at the velum and trilled at the uvula, resulting in a simultaneous voiceless velar fricative and a voiceless uvular trill. I don't know what you mean by "semi-rhotic", though. It's not a term that appears in the literature, as far as I know. Sol505000 (talk) 13:27, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

@Sol505000 Thanks for the information. Juidzi (talk) 13:44, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

So that's means “[ɣ]” sound can present by "r" letter? Juidzi (talk) 14:00, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but it's not that common in world's languages. A prototypical (e.g. Proto-Indo-European) /r/ is an alveolar trill, according to some theories. A failure to articulate that results either in a uvular trill (where the uvula trills against the tongue, instead of the tip of the tongue trilling against the alveolar ridge, so trilling itself is achieved, though the place of articulation changes drastically from one "side" of the mouth to the other) or a voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative (where the air escapes through a narrow passage between the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge and the teeth are not clenched - here, the alveolar place of articulation is preserved). If you can do an alveolar trill, you can test this out yourself. I myself can't trill my /r/'s for too long (I mean far more long than the typical 3-5 cycles of Spanish, which I can do without any problems) as they tend to become an alveolar non-sibilant fricative. The uvular trill itself can be undershoot as a fricative or an approximant (or indeed, a semi-vowel in the range [ɐ ~ ʌ ~ ɑ], perhaps also [ə] at times), whereas the alveolar non-sibilant fricative can also be produced without frication, i.e. as an approximant (not the /r/ of English, which is too retracted and inappropriately labialized. I mean the prototypical [ɹ], which is properly alveolar and not labialized, so that it sounds more like the lateral [l] (even though it is not a lateral consonant). You can hear it in Swedish). The outcome varies from language to language, or even from dialect to dialect.

These processes don't have to occur in any given language, at least not in the standard form (idiolectally - of course they do. That's what rhotacism is). The guttural /r/ can be the result of language contact with a language (or a language variety) where it's already been established as the prestigious norm.

I'd bet a lot of money on velar /r/ that does not vary between velar and uvular (without conflicting reports from different sources, as it is the case with German), velar and pharyngeal etc. being very uncommon among world's languages due to human anatomy and also because /ɡ/ ranges from a plosive to an approximant (including a weak fricative) in some languages, e.g. Spanish, Catalan, German, Swedish and also in colloquial English. One reason for that is (apart from what I've already said) that this [ɣ] by definition couldn't be trilled as velar trills are impossible (palatal trills are also extremely uncommon, the only common dorsal trill is the uvular trill), and it's quite common for the guttural /r/ to have trilled allophones. Velar and uvular fricatives need a lot of further research to determine their exact place of articulation (including whether or not they are trilled), their allophonic ranges and any dialectal differences involving either of those. In my experience this applies more to the voiceless fricatives than the voiced ones, which on the whole seem to be described more accurately (or maybe they're not, I'm not sure). Sol505000 (talk) 21:44, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Romani

I can't find the word γoines on Wörterbuch Romani-Deutsch-Englisch für den südosteuropäischen Raum by Boretzky and Igla, ROMLEX, or Morri angluni rromane ćhibǎqi evroputni lavustik by Marcel Courthiade. Should I delete this? --YukaSylvie (talk) 01:24, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

correct or incorrect

Is the based voice of the consonant (ɣ) correct? 93.114.24.153 (talk) 20:42, 3 March 2023 (UTC)