Voiceless velar stop
The voiceless velar stop or voiceless velar plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is k.

The  sound is a very common sound cross-linguistically. Most languages have at least a plain , and some distinguish more than one variety. Most Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindi and Bengali, have a two-way contrast between aspirated and plain . Only a few languages lack a voiceless velar stop, e.g. Tahitian.

Some languages have the voiceless pre-velar stop, which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical voiceless velar stop, though not as front as the prototypical voiceless palatal stop.

Conversely, some languages have the voiceless post-velar stop, which is articulated slightly behind the place of articulation of the prototypical voiceless velar stop, though not as back as the prototypical voiceless uvular stop.

Features
Features of the voiceless velar stop:

Varieties

Occurrence