The consonant is absent in English, but may be approximated by making [ɡ] but with the tongue body lowered or [w] but with the lips apart.

The voiced velar approximant can in many cases be considered the semivocalic counterpart of the close back unrounded vowel [ɯ].

It is named after het Gooi, a region of the Netherlands where Hilversum (the main centre for television and radio broadcasting) is located.

Examples of such languages are Catalan, Galician and Spanish, in which the approximant consonant (not semivowel) unspecified for rounding appears as an allophone of /ɡ/.

Many authors have pointed out the fact that [ɰ] is not rounded; for example, Pullum & Ladusaw (1986:98) state that 'the sound in question can be described as a semi-vowel (glide) with the properties "high", "back", and "unrounded"'.

Ball & Rahilly too criticise in a footnote the confusion between these symbols: 'The difference between an approximant version of the voiced velar fricative [ɣ], and the velar semi-vowel [ɰ] is that the latter requires spread lips, and must have a slightly more open articulatory channel so that it becomes [ɯ] if prolonged' (p. 189, fn.