Velar consonant in the context of "Centum and satem languages"

The Northern Eastern Sudanic, Eastern k Sudanic, Ek Sudanic, NNT or Astaboran languages may form a primary division of the proposed Eastern Sudanic family. They are characterised by having a /k/ in the first person singular pronoun "I/me", as opposed to the Southern Eastern Sudanic languages, which have an /n/. Nyima has yet to be conclusively linked to the other languages, and would appear to be the closest relative of Ek Sudanic rather than Ek Sudanic proper.

The most well-known language of this group is Nubian. According to Claude Rilly, the ancient Meroitic language appears on limited evidence to be closely related to the languages of this group.

Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants (sounds of "K", "G" and "Y" type) of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An example of the different developments is provided by the words for "hundred" found in the early attested Indo-European languages (which is where the two branches get their names). In centum languages, they typically began with a /k/ sound (Latin centum was pronounced with initial /k/), but in satem languages, they often began with /s/ (the example satem comes from the Avestan language of Zoroastrian scripture).

The table below shows the traditional reconstruction of the PIE dorsal consonants, with three series, but according to some more recent theories there may actually have been only two series or three series with different pronunciations from those traditionally ascribed. In centum languages, the palatovelars, which included the initial consonant of the "hundred" root, merged with the plain velars. In satem languages, they remained distinct, and the labiovelars merged with the plain velars.

Guttural speech sounds are those with a primary place of articulation near the back of the oral cavity, where it is difficult to distinguish a sound's place of articulation and its phonation. In popular usage it is an imprecise term for sounds produced relatively far back in the vocal tract, such as the German ch or the Arabic ayin, but not simple glottal sounds like h. The term 'guttural language' is used for languages that have such sounds.

As a technical term used by phoneticians and phonologists, guttural has had various definitions. The concept always includes pharyngeal consonants, but may include velar, uvular or laryngeal consonants as well.Guttural sounds are typically consonants, but murmured, pharyngealized, glottalized and strident vowels may be also considered guttural in nature.Some phonologists argue that all post-velar sounds constitute a natural class.

Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead. Uvular affricates can certainly be made but are rare: they occur in most Turkic languages, most Persian languages, most Arabic languages, in some southern High-German dialects, as well as a few African and Native American languages. (Ejective uvular affricates occur as realizations of uvular stops in Kazakh, Bashkir, Arabic dialects, Lillooet, or as allophonic realizations of the ejective uvular fricative in Georgian.) Uvular consonants are typically incompatible with advanced tongue root, and they often cause retraction of neighboring vowels.

The phonology of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) has been reconstructed by linguists, based on the similarities and differences among current and extinct Indo-European languages. Because PIE was not written, linguists must rely on the evidence of its earliest attested descendants, such as Hittite, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Latin, to reconstruct its phonology.

The reconstruction of abstract units of PIE phonological systems (i.e. segments, or phonemes in traditional phonology) is mostly uncontroversial, although areas of dispute remain. Their phonetic interpretation is harder to establish; this pertains especially to the vowels, the so-called laryngeals, the palatal and plain velars and the voiced and voiced aspirated stops.

The ruki sound law, also known as the ruki rule or iurk rule, is a historical sound change that took place in the satem branches of the Indo-European language family, namely in Balto-Slavic, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian. According to this sound law, an original *s changed to *š (a sound similar to English ⟨sh⟩) after the consonants *r, *k, *g, *gʰ and the semi-vowels *w (*u̯) and *y (*i̯), as well as the syllabic allophones *r̥, *i, and *u:

Specifically, the initial stage involves the retraction of the coronal sibilant *s after semi-vowels, *r, or a velar consonant *k, *g or *gʰ. In the second stage, leveling of the sibilant system resulted in retroflexion (cf. Sanskrit ष *[ʂ] and Proto-Slavic), and later retraction to velar *x in Slavic and some Middle Indic languages. This rule was first formulated by Holger Pedersen, and it is sometimes known as Pedersen's law, although this term is also applied to another sound law concerning stress in the Balto-Slavic languages.

The Slavic second palatalization is a Proto-Slavic sound change that manifested as a regressive palatalization of inherited Balto-Slavic velar consonants that occurred after the first and before the third Slavic palatalizations.