Dorsal consonant

Dorsal consonants are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum). They include the palatal, velar and, in some cases, alveolo-palatal and uvular consonants. They contrast with coronal consonants, articulated with the flexible front of the tongue, and laryngeal consonants, articulated in the pharyngeal cavity.

Function

The dorsum of the tongue can contact a broad region of the roof of the mouth, from the hard palate (palatal consonants), the flexible velum behind that (velar consonants), to the uvula at the back of the mouth cavity (uvular consonants). These distinctions are not clear cut, and sometimes finer gradations such as pre-palatal, pre-velar, and post-velar will be noted.

Because the tip of the tongue can curl back to also contact the hard palate for retroflex consonants (subapical-palatal), consonants produced by contact between the dorsum and the palate are sometimes called dorso-palatal.

Examples

Familiar dorsal consonants

IPA symbol	Name of the consonant	Language	Example	IPA
⟨ɲ⟩	Voiced palatal nasal	Albanian	një	[ɲə]
⟨ʝ⟩	Voiced palatal fricative	Modern Greek	για	[ʝa]
⟨ç⟩	Voiceless palatal fricative	German	Reich	[ʁaɪ̯ç]
⟨j⟩	Voiced palatal approximant	English	yellow	[ˈjɛloʊ]
⟨ŋ⟩	Voiced velar nasal		sing	[ˈsɪŋ]
⟨ɡ⟩	Voiced velar plosive		garden	[ˈɡɑː(ɹ)dn̩]
⟨k⟩	Voiceless velar plosive	cake	[ˈkeɪk]
⟨ɣ⟩	Voiced velar fricative	Modern Greek	góma (γόμα)	[ˈɣoma]
⟨x⟩	Voiceless velar fricative	Malay	akhir	[aːˈxir]
⟨ʍ⟩	Voiceless labio-velar approximant	English	whine	[ˈʍaɪn]
⟨w⟩	Voiced labio-velar approximant		water	[ˈwɔːtə(ɹ)]
⟨q⟩	Voiceless uvular plosive	Arabic	Qurʾān (قرآن)	[qurʔaːn]
⟨ɢ⟩	Voiced uvular plosive	Persian	Qom (قم)	[ɢom]
⟨ʁ⟩	Voiced uvular fricative or approximant	French	Paris	[paʁi]
⟨χ⟩	Voiceless uvular fricative	German	Bach	[baχ]

See also

• Place of articulation
• List of phonetics topics

References

• Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.