IPA reference · consonant
ɣ — voiced velar fricative
The voiced counterpart of /x/.
How to make the voiced velar fricative
Velar friction with the voice on. It sounds like a soft gargle and is often described as a "g without the stop".
This sound does not occur in standard English. That means there is no word you can say to find it by accident; you have to build it from the articulatory instruction above and check it against a recording.
Languages that use it
Sounds it gets confused with
Most pronunciation errors are not random — they are a substitution of the nearest sound the speaker already owns. These are the usual substitutions for ɣ, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
The default substitution; Greek γ and Spanish intervocalic g are never stops.
What this means for learners
In Spanish this is an allophone rather than a separate phoneme, so getting it wrong does not change meaning — but it is a strong accent marker.
Teaching this sound
Describing a sound in words gets a student roughly half the way there. The other half is hearing it produced correctly, immediately after producing it incorrectly, with both versions available to replay. That is the argument for recording during the lesson rather than after it: the student leaves with your model of ɣ attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol ɣ make?
ɣ is the voiced velar fricative. The voiced counterpart of /x/. It does not occur in standard English.
How do you pronounce ɣ?
Velar friction with the voice on. It sounds like a soft gargle and is often described as a "g without the stop".
Which languages have the voiced velar fricative?
Among the languages covered here: Greek (γάλα, “milk”); Spanish (lago, “lake”); Arabic (غرب, “west”).
What is the difference between ɣ and ɡ?
The default substitution; Greek γ and Spanish intervocalic g are never stops.