Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the “velum”). Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive and the movements of the dorsum are not very precise, velars easily undergo assimilation, shifting their articulation back or to the front depending on the quality of adjacent vowels. They often become automatically fronted, that is partly or completely palatal before a following front vowel, and retracted, that is partly or completely uvular before back vowels. Palatalised velars (like English in keen or cube) are sometimes referred to as palatovelars. Many languages also have labialized velars, such as , in which the articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips. There are also labial–velar consonants, which are doubly articulated at the velum and at the lips, such as . This distinction disappears with the approximant consonant since labialization involves adding of a labial approximant articulation to a sound, and this ambiguous situation is often called labiovelar. A velar trill or tap is not possible according to the International Phonetics Association: see the shaded boxes on the table of pulmonic consonants. In the velar position, the tongue has an extremely restricted ability to carry out the type of motion associated with trills or taps, and the body of the tongue has no freedom to move quickly enough to produce a velar trill or flap. Examples The velar consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are: Lack of velars The velar consonant is the most common consonant in human languages. The only languages recorded to lack velars (and any dorsal consonant at all) may be Xavante, Tahitian, and (phonologically but not phonetically) several Skou languages (Wutung, a dialect of Vanimo, and Bobe). In Pirahã, men may lack the only velar consonant. Other languages lack simple velars. An areal feature of the indigenous languages of the Americas of the coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest is that historical *k was palatalized. When such sounds remained stops, they were transcribed in Americanist phonetic notation, presumably corresponding to IPA , but in others, such as the Saanich dialect of Coastal Salish, Salish-Spokane-Kalispel, and Chemakum, *k went further and affricated to . Likewise, historical *k’ has become and historical *x has become ; there was no *g or *ŋ. In the Northwest