voiceless velar stop

A voiceless velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the "k" sound in "skip". The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨k⟩.

A [k] sound is a very common sound cross-linguistically. Most languages have at least a plain [k], and some distinguish more than one variety. Many languages also have a two-way contrast between aspirated and plain [k]. Only a few languages lack a voiceless velar plosive, e.g. North Azerbaijani, Tahitian, and Mongolian.