A voiceless labialâÂÂvelar fricative, or more accurately a voiceless labialized velar fricative and sometimes analyzed as a voiceless labialâÂÂvelar approximant, is a type of consonantal sound, used in spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is or, rather ambiguously, . The letter was defined as a "voiceless " until 1979, when it was defined as a fricative with the place of articulation of the same way that is an approximant with the place of articulation of . The IPA Handbook describes as a "fricative" in the introduction, while a chapter within characterizes it as an "approximant".
There has historically been some controversy over whether a voiceless approximant could be distinct from a fricative, but more recent research distinguishes between turbulent (fricative-like) and laminar (vowel- or approximant-like) airflow in the vocal tract. English is an approximant , a labialized glottal fricative , or an sequence, not a velar fricative. Scots has been described as a velar fricative, especially in older Scots and peripheral dialects, where it is . Ladefoged and Maddieson were unable to confirm that any language has fricatives produced at two places of articulation, as the term "labialâÂÂvelar" implies. They conclude that "if [ÃÂ] is a fricative, it is better described as a voiceless labialized velar fricative".
Features of a voiceless labialized velar fricative: