Labiovelarity and voicelessness

Just as [j] has a voiceless counterpart, so does [w]. This sound can be transcribed as or . As for [j], there is friction for this sound, but the audible friction is generated at the lips.

The combination of tongue-back raising + lip-rounding + voicelessness occurs in two main places in English. The first is parallel to the places where voicelessness + palatality + approximation occur, in clusters with voiceless consonants. So for instance, words like ‘twin’ or ‘twenty’ have a period of labiovelar approximation + voicelessness once the plosive has been released .

The other place where it occurs depends on the speaker’s dialect. For many speakers of English, words like ‘witch’ – ‘which’, ‘wail’ – ‘whale’ are homophones, i.e. they sound identical. But for some speakers, including many Scots and North Americans, there is a distinction maintained between [w] and , with  being used in words spelt .