kʲ

palatalised k — Japanese きゃ kya — k said with the tongue already in y position.

plosivevelarvoicelesspalatalised

Hear it

Synthesised in your browser from this sound's own recipe — formants for vowels, filtered noise for fricatives, a burst for plosives. A robot mouth, not a recording: what you hear is the physics the symbol describes.

▶on its own▶slowly

In combination

Sounds change colour depending on their neighbours — coarticulation is why isolated drilling only gets you so far.

Build longer chains in the combination lab.

How each language writes it

Rows follow the languages you have switched on at the top.