Gemination
Encyclopedia
In phonetics
, gemination happens when a spoken consonant
is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant
. Gemination is distinct from stress
and may appear independently of it.
Consonant length is distinctive
in some languages, for instance Arabic
, Danish
, Estonian
, Finnish
, Classical Hebrew, Hungarian
, Catalan
, Italian
, Japanese
, Latin
, Ganda and Russian
. Most languages (including also English
) do not have distinctive long consonants. Vowel length
is distinctive in more languages than consonant length, although several languages feature both independently (as in Finnish), or have interdependent vowel and consonant length (as in Norwegian
and Swedish
).
, nasals
, laterals
, approximants
, and trills
are simply prolonged. In lengthened stops
, the obstruction of the airway is prolonged, delaying release. That is, the "hold" is lengthened. Long consonants are usually around one and a half or two times as long as short consonants, depending on the language.
In some languages, e.g., Italian
, Swedish
, Faroese
, Icelandic
and Ganda, consonant length and vowel length
depend on each other. That is, a short vowel within a stressed syllable almost always precedes a long consonant or a consonant cluster, whereas a long vowel must be followed by a short consonant. In Classical Arabic
, a long vowel was lengthened even more before permanently geminate consonants, this is no longer exhibited in varieties of colloquial Arabic or even MSA, however.
In other languages, such as Finnish
, consonant length and vowel length
are independent of each other. In Finnish, both are phonemic, such that taka /taka/ "back", takka /takːa/ "fireplace", taakka /taːkːa/ "burden", and so forth are different, unrelated words; this distinction is traceable all the way back to Proto-Uralic. Finnish consonant length is also affected by consonant gradation
. Another important phenomenon is that sandhi
produces long consonants to word boundaries from an archiphonemic glottal stop
, for example → /otasːe/ "take it!"
Distinctive consonant length is usually restricted to certain consonants. There are very few languages that have initial consonant length; among them are Pattani Malay, Chuukese
, a few Romance languages
such as Sicilian
and Neapolitan
, and many of the High Alemannic German
dialects (such as Thurgovian). Some African languages, such as Setswana and Ganda, also have initial consonant length—in fact, initial consonant length is very common in Ganda and is used to indicate certain grammatical
features. In spoken Finnish
and in spoken Italian
, long consonants are produced between words by sandhi
effects.
Among stops
and fricatives, in most languages only voiceless consonants occur geminated.
The reverse of gemination is the process in which a long consonant is reduced to a short one. This is called degemination. This is a pattern observed in Baltic-Finnic consonant gradation
, where the strong grade (often, but not necessarily nominative) form of the word is degeminated into a weak grade (often all other cases) form of the word, e.g. taakka → taakan (burden, of the burden).
(شدة). It is written above the consonant which is to be doubled. It is the most common diacritic that is sometimes used in ordinary spelling to avoid ambiguity
. Example: <ر> /rr/; مدرسة /madrasa/ school vs. مدرّسة /mudarrisa/ teacher (f.)
The word 'bundene' can phonemically be analyzed as /bɔnənə/, with the middle schwa being assimilated to [n].
, consonant length is not distinctive within root words. For instance, 'baggage' is pronounced ˈ, not */bæɡːɪdʒ/. Phonetic gemination occurs marginally.
However, gemination does occur across words and across morphemes when the last consonant in a given word and the first consonant in the following word are the same fricative, nasal
, or plosive. For instance:
With affricates, however, this does not occur. For instance:
A minimal pair
demonstrating gemination in English is "night train" versus "night rain".
In some dialects gemination is also found when the suffix -ly follows a root ending in -l or -ll, as in:
In most instances, the absence of this doubling does not affect the meaning, though it may confuse the listener momentarily. Notable examples where the doubling does affect the meaning are the pairs "unaimed" [ʌnˈeɪmd] versus "unnamed" [ʌˈnːeɪmd], and "holy" [hoʊli] versus "wholly" [ˈhoʊlːi]. (The latter two are identical in many areas, however.)
In some varieties of Welsh English
, the process takes place indiscriminately between vowels, e.g. in money [ˈmɜ.nːiː] but it also applies when the orthography dictates it, e.g. butter [ˈbɜt̚.tə]
has three phonemic lengths; however, the third length is a suprasegmental feature, which is as much tonal patterning as a length distinction. It is traceable to allophony caused by now-deleted suffixes, for example half-long linna < *linnan "of the city" vs. overlong linna < *linnahan "to the city".
, consonant length was distinctive, e.g., [mélɔː] "I am of interest" vs. [mélːɔː] "I am going to".
The distinction has been lost in Modern Greek
, except in dialects such as the Cypriot-Greek dialect spoken in Cyprus, in varieties of the Aegean sea and elsewhere.
, consonant length is phonemic, e.g. megy mɛ͡ɟʝ, 'goes' and meggy [mɛ͡ɟʝː], 'sour cherry'.
, consonant length is distinctive. For example, "bevve" /'bevve/ ['bevve] means "he/she drank", while "beve" /'beve/ ['be:ve] means "he/she drinks/is drinking". Tonic syllables are bimoraic
and are therefore composed of either a long vowel in an open syllable (beve) or a short vowel in a closed syllable (bevve). Double consonants occur not only within words but at word boundaries, where they are pronounced but not necessarily written: "chi + sa" = "chissà'" (who knows) [kis'sa] and "vado a casa" (I am going home) pronounced ['va:do ak'ka:sa]. See syntactic doubling
(The last example refers to standard (Tuscan) and central-southern Italian).
, consonant length is distinctive (as is vowel length). Gemination in the syllabary
is represented with the sokuon
, a small tsu: っ for hiragana
in native words and ッ for katakana
in foreign words. For example, 来た (きた, kita) means 'came; arrived', while 切った (きった, kitta) means 'cut; sliced'. バグ (bagu) means '(computer) bug', and バッグ (baggu) means 'bag'.
, consonant length was distinctive, as in anus "ring" vs. annus "year". (Vowel length
was also distinctive in Latin, but is not reflected in the orthography.) Gemination inherited from Latin still occurs in Italian
and Catalan
. It has been almost completely lost in French
and completely in Romanian
.
There are three consonants that cannot be geminated: /j/, /w/ and /l/. Whenever morphological
rules would geminate these consonants, /j/ and /w/ are prefixed with /ɡ/, and /l/ changes to /d/. For example:
, consonant length is distinctive. For example,
in its official script Gurmukhi
uses a diacritic called an áddak ( ੱ ) (ਅੱਧਕ, ə́dːək) which is written above the word and indicates that the following consonant is geminate. Gemination is specially characteristic of Punjabi compared to other Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi-Urdu, where instead of the presence of consonant lengthening, the preceding vowel tends to be lengthened. Consonant length is distinctive in Punjabi, for example:
, consonant length (indicated with two letters, as in ванна ˈvannə 'bathtub') may occur in several situations.
, geminates are found between vowels: багаття /bɑɦɑtʲːɑ/ 'bonfire', подружжя /pɔdruʒʲːɑ/ 'married couple', обличчя 'face'. Geminates also occur at the start of a few words: лляний /lʲːɑnɪj/ 'flaxen', forms of the verb лити 'to pour' (ллю /lʲːu/, ллєш /lʲːɛʃ/ etc.), ссати /sːɑtɪ/ 'to suck' and derivatives.
, an indigenous Australian language, consonant length in stops is the primary phonetic feature that differentiates fortis and lenis
stops. Wagiman does not have phonetic voice. Word-initial and word-final stops never contrast for length.
, consonant length is often indicated by writing a consonant twice ("ss", "kk", "pp", and so forth), but can also be indicated with a special symbol, such as the shadda
in Arabic, or sokuon
in Japanese
. Estonian uses 'b', 'd', 'g' for short consonants, and 'p', 't', 'k' and 'pp', 'tt', 'kk' are used for long consonants.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet
, long consonants are normally written using the triangular colon ː, e.g., penne [penːe] (a kind of pasta), though doubled letters are also used (especially for underlying phonemic forms).
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...
, gemination happens when a spoken consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
. Gemination is distinct from stress
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
and may appear independently of it.
Consonant length is distinctive
Distinctive feature
In linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that may be analyzed in phonological theory.Distinctive features are grouped into categories according to the natural classes of segments they describe: major class features, laryngeal features, manner features,...
in some languages, for instance Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, Estonian
Estonian language
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, Classical Hebrew, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, Ganda and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
. Most languages (including also English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
) do not have distinctive long consonants. Vowel length
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
is distinctive in more languages than consonant length, although several languages feature both independently (as in Finnish), or have interdependent vowel and consonant length (as in Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
and Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
).
Phonology
Lengthened fricativesFricative consonant
Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
, nasals
Nasal consonant
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
, laterals
Lateral consonant
A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....
, approximants
Approximant consonant
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...
, and trills
Trill consonant
In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....
are simply prolonged. In lengthened stops
Stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
, the obstruction of the airway is prolonged, delaying release. That is, the "hold" is lengthened. Long consonants are usually around one and a half or two times as long as short consonants, depending on the language.
In some languages, e.g., Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, Faroese
Faroese language
Faroese , is an Insular Nordic language spoken by 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 25,000 Faroese people in Denmark and elsewhere...
, Icelandic
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
and Ganda, consonant length and vowel length
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
depend on each other. That is, a short vowel within a stressed syllable almost always precedes a long consonant or a consonant cluster, whereas a long vowel must be followed by a short consonant. In Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times . It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes...
, a long vowel was lengthened even more before permanently geminate consonants, this is no longer exhibited in varieties of colloquial Arabic or even MSA, however.
In other languages, such as Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, consonant length and vowel length
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
are independent of each other. In Finnish, both are phonemic, such that taka /taka/ "back", takka /takːa/ "fireplace", taakka /taːkːa/ "burden", and so forth are different, unrelated words; this distinction is traceable all the way back to Proto-Uralic. Finnish consonant length is also affected by consonant gradation
Consonant gradation
Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various "grades". It is found in some Uralic languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Northern Sámi, and the Samoyed language Nganasan. In addition, it has been reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, the parent...
. Another important phenomenon is that sandhi
Sandhi
Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries . Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words...
produces long consonants to word boundaries from an archiphonemic glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
, for example
Distinctive consonant length is usually restricted to certain consonants. There are very few languages that have initial consonant length; among them are Pattani Malay, Chuukese
Chuukese language
Chuukese is a Trukic language of the Austronesian language family spoken primarily on the islands of Chuuk in the Caroline Islands in Micronesia. There are some speakers on Pohnpei and Guam as well...
, a few Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
such as Sicilian
Sicilian language
Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Extreme-Southern Italian language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria ; in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento ; and Campania, on the Italian mainland, where it is...
and Neapolitan
Neapolitan language
Neapolitan is the language of the city and region of Naples , and Campania. On October 14, 2008 a law by the Region of Campania stated that the Neapolitan language had to be protected....
, and many of the High Alemannic German
High Alemannic German
High Alemannic is a branch of Alemannic German and is often considered to be part of the German language, even though it is only partly intelligible to non-Alemannic speakers....
dialects (such as Thurgovian). Some African languages, such as Setswana and Ganda, also have initial consonant length—in fact, initial consonant length is very common in Ganda and is used to indicate certain grammatical
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
features. In spoken Finnish
Spoken Finnish
Colloquial Finnish is the "dialectless" colloquial standard of the Finnish language. It is spoken in the Greater Helsinki region, and in urbanized areas in the Tavastian and Central Finland dialectal areas, such as the cities of Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna...
and in spoken Italian
Italian phonology
This article is about the phonology of the Italian language. It deals with the phonology and phonetics of Standard Italian as well as with geographical variants.-Vowels:Notes:*In Italian there is no phonemic distinction between long and short vowels...
, long consonants are produced between words by sandhi
Sandhi
Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries . Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words...
effects.
Among stops
Stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
and fricatives, in most languages only voiceless consonants occur geminated.
The reverse of gemination is the process in which a long consonant is reduced to a short one. This is called degemination. This is a pattern observed in Baltic-Finnic consonant gradation
Consonant gradation
Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various "grades". It is found in some Uralic languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Northern Sámi, and the Samoyed language Nganasan. In addition, it has been reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, the parent...
, where the strong grade (often, but not necessarily nominative) form of the word is degeminated into a weak grade (often all other cases) form of the word, e.g. taakka → taakan (burden, of the burden).
Arabic
Arabic uses a diacritic shaped like a small written Latin "w" called shaddaShadda
Shadda , is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, marking a long consonant . It is functionally equivalent to writing a consonant twice in the orthographies of languages like Latin, Italian, Swedish, and Ancient Greek, and is thus rendered in Latin script in most schemes of Arabic...
(شدة). It is written above the consonant which is to be doubled. It is the most common diacritic that is sometimes used in ordinary spelling to avoid ambiguity
Ambiguity
Ambiguity of words or phrases is the ability to express more than one interpretation. It is distinct from vagueness, which is a statement about the lack of precision contained or available in the information.Context may play a role in resolving ambiguity...
. Example: <
Danish
Danish has a three-way consonant length distinction. For instance:- bunde [b̥ɔnə] 'bottoms'
- bundne [b̥ɔnnə] 'bound' (pl.)
- bundene [b̥ɔnn̩nə] 'the bottoms'
The word 'bundene' can phonemically be analyzed as /bɔnənə/, with the middle schwa being assimilated to [n].
English
In English phonologyEnglish phonology
English phonology is the study of the sound system of the English language. Like many languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect...
, consonant length is not distinctive within root words. For instance, 'baggage' is pronounced ˈ, not */bæɡːɪdʒ/. Phonetic gemination occurs marginally.
However, gemination does occur across words and across morphemes when the last consonant in a given word and the first consonant in the following word are the same fricative, nasal
Nasal consonant
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
, or plosive. For instance:
- calm man [kɑːˈmːæn]
- this saddle [ðɪˈsːædəl]
- black coat [blæˈkːoʊt]
- back kick [ˈbækːɪk]
- crack cocaine [ˌkrækːoˈkeɪn]
- cattail (compare consonant length in "catfish")
With affricates, however, this does not occur. For instance:
- orange juice [ˈɒrɪndʒ dʒuːs]
A minimal pair
Minimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phonological element, such as a phone, phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have distinct meanings...
demonstrating gemination in English is "night train" versus "night rain".
In some dialects gemination is also found when the suffix -ly follows a root ending in -l or -ll, as in:
- solely [soʊlːi]
In most instances, the absence of this doubling does not affect the meaning, though it may confuse the listener momentarily. Notable examples where the doubling does affect the meaning are the pairs "unaimed" [ʌnˈeɪmd] versus "unnamed" [ʌˈnːeɪmd], and "holy" [hoʊli] versus "wholly" [ˈhoʊlːi]. (The latter two are identical in many areas, however.)
In some varieties of Welsh English
Welsh English
Welsh English, Anglo-Welsh, or Wenglish refers to the dialects of English spoken in Wales by Welsh people. The dialects are significantly influenced by Welsh grammar and often include words derived from Welsh...
, the process takes place indiscriminately between vowels, e.g. in money [ˈmɜ.nːiː] but it also applies when the orthography dictates it, e.g. butter [ˈbɜt̚.tə]
Estonian
EstonianEstonian language
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
has three phonemic lengths; however, the third length is a suprasegmental feature, which is as much tonal patterning as a length distinction. It is traceable to allophony caused by now-deleted suffixes, for example half-long linna < *linnan "of the city" vs. overlong linna < *linnahan "to the city".
Finnish
Consonant length is phonemic in Finnish: For example, takka ˈtakːa (transcribed with the length sign [ː] or with a doubled sign [ˈtakka]), 'fireplace', but taka [ˈtaka], 'back'.Greek
In Ancient GreekAncient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, consonant length was distinctive, e.g., [mélɔː] "I am of interest" vs. [mélːɔː] "I am going to".
The distinction has been lost in Modern Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
, except in dialects such as the Cypriot-Greek dialect spoken in Cyprus, in varieties of the Aegean sea and elsewhere.
Hungarian
In HungarianHungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, consonant length is phonemic, e.g. megy mɛ͡ɟʝ, 'goes' and meggy [mɛ͡ɟʝː], 'sour cherry'.
Italian
In Standard ItalianItalian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, consonant length is distinctive. For example, "bevve" /'bevve/ ['bevve] means "he/she drank", while "beve" /'beve/ ['be:ve] means "he/she drinks/is drinking". Tonic syllables are bimoraic
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
and are therefore composed of either a long vowel in an open syllable (beve) or a short vowel in a closed syllable (bevve). Double consonants occur not only within words but at word boundaries, where they are pronounced but not necessarily written: "chi + sa" = "chissà'" (who knows) [kis'sa] and "vado a casa" (I am going home) pronounced ['va:do ak'ka:sa]. See syntactic doubling
Syntactic doubling
Syntactic gemination, or syntactic doubling, is an external sandhi phenomenon in Italian and some other Western Romance languages. It consists in the lengthening of the initial consonant after words of certain categories....
(The last example refers to standard (Tuscan) and central-southern Italian).
Japanese
In JapaneseJapanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, consonant length is distinctive (as is vowel length). Gemination in the syllabary
Syllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
is represented with the sokuon
Sokuon
The is a Japanese symbol consisting of a small hiragana or katakana tsu. In less formal language it is called or , meaning "little tsu". Compare to a full-sized tsu:The sokuon is used for various purposes...
, a small tsu: っ for hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
in native words and ッ for katakana
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
in foreign words. For example, 来た (きた, kita) means 'came; arrived', while 切った (きった, kitta) means 'cut; sliced'. バグ (bagu) means '(computer) bug', and バッグ (baggu) means 'bag'.
Latin and Romance languages
In LatinLatin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, consonant length was distinctive, as in anus "ring" vs. annus "year". (Vowel length
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
was also distinctive in Latin, but is not reflected in the orthography.) Gemination inherited from Latin still occurs in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
and Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
. It has been almost completely lost in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and completely in Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
.
Ganda
Ganda is unusual in that gemination can occur word-initially, as well as word-medially. For example kkapa /kːapa/ 'cat', /ɟːaɟːa/ jjajja 'grandfather' and /ɲːabo/ nnyabo 'madam' all begin with geminate consonants.There are three consonants that cannot be geminated: /j/, /w/ and /l/. Whenever morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
rules would geminate these consonants, /j/ and /w/ are prefixed with /ɡ/, and /l/ changes to /d/. For example:
- -ye /je/ 'army' (root) → ggye /ɟːe/ 'an army' (noun)
- -yinja /jiːɲɟa/ 'stone' (root) → jjinja /ɟːiːɲɟa/ 'a stone' (noun); jj is usually spelt ggy
- -wanga /waːŋɡa/ 'nation' (root) → ggwanga /ɡːwaːŋɡa/ 'a nation' (noun)
- -lagala /laɡala/ 'medicine' (root) → ddagala /dːaɡala/ 'medicine' (noun)
Polish
In PolishPolish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, consonant length is distinctive. For example,
- rodziny – 'families'; rodzinny – adjective of 'family'
- leki lɛki – 'medicines'; lekki [lɛkːi] – 'light' (adjective referring to weight only)
- Grecy – 'Greeks' (noun); greccy [ɡrɛttsɨ] – 'Greek' (adjective).
Punjabi
PunjabiPunjabi language
Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language...
in its official script Gurmukhi
Gurmukhi script
Gurmukhi is the most common script used for writing the Punjabi language. An abugida derived from the Laṇḍā script and ultimately descended from Brahmi, Gurmukhi was standardized by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad Dev Ji, in the 16th century. The whole of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji's 1430...
uses a diacritic called an áddak ( ੱ ) (ਅੱਧਕ, ə́dːək) which is written above the word and indicates that the following consonant is geminate. Gemination is specially characteristic of Punjabi compared to other Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi-Urdu, where instead of the presence of consonant lengthening, the preceding vowel tends to be lengthened. Consonant length is distinctive in Punjabi, for example:
- ਦਸ [d̪əs] – 'ten'; ਦੱਸ [d̪əsː] – 'tell' (verb)
- ਪਤਾ [pət̪a] – 'aware of something'; ਪੱਤਾ [pət̪ːa] – 'leaf'
- ਸਤ [sət̪] – 'truth' (liturgical); ਸੱਤ [sət̪ː] – 'seven'
- ਕਲਾ [kəla] – 'art'; ਕੱਲਾ [kəlːa] – 'alone'
Russian
In RussianRussian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, consonant length (indicated with two letters, as in ванна ˈvannə 'bathtub') may occur in several situations.
- Word formationWord formationIn linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning...
or conjugationGrammatical conjugationIn linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
: длина ([dʲlʲɪˈna] 'length') → длинный ([ˈdʲlʲinnɨj] 'long') - Phonological alternations:
- высший ([ˈvɨʂːɨj] 'highest').
Ukrainian
In UkrainianUkrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
, geminates are found between vowels: багаття /bɑɦɑtʲːɑ/ 'bonfire', подружжя /pɔdruʒʲːɑ/ 'married couple', обличчя 'face'. Geminates also occur at the start of a few words: лляний /lʲːɑnɪj/ 'flaxen', forms of the verb лити 'to pour' (ллю /lʲːu/, ллєш /lʲːɛʃ/ etc.), ссати /sːɑtɪ/ 'to suck' and derivatives.
Wagiman
In WagimanWagiman language
Wagiman is a near-extinct indigenous Australian language spoken by fewer than 10 people in and around Pine Creek, in the Katherine Region of the Northern Territory....
, an indigenous Australian language, consonant length in stops is the primary phonetic feature that differentiates fortis and lenis
Fortis and lenis
In linguistics, fortis and lenis are terms generally used to refer to groups of consonants that are produced with greater and lesser energy, respectively, such as in energy applied, articulation, etc....
stops. Wagiman does not have phonetic voice. Word-initial and word-final stops never contrast for length.
Writing
In written languageWriting
Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...
, consonant length is often indicated by writing a consonant twice ("ss", "kk", "pp", and so forth), but can also be indicated with a special symbol, such as the shadda
Shadda
Shadda , is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, marking a long consonant . It is functionally equivalent to writing a consonant twice in the orthographies of languages like Latin, Italian, Swedish, and Ancient Greek, and is thus rendered in Latin script in most schemes of Arabic...
in Arabic, or sokuon
Sokuon
The is a Japanese symbol consisting of a small hiragana or katakana tsu. In less formal language it is called or , meaning "little tsu". Compare to a full-sized tsu:The sokuon is used for various purposes...
in Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
. Estonian uses 'b', 'd', 'g' for short consonants, and 'p', 't', 'k' and 'pp', 'tt', 'kk' are used for long consonants.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
, long consonants are normally written using the triangular colon ː, e.g., penne [penːe] (a kind of pasta), though doubled letters are also used (especially for underlying phonemic forms).
- CatalanCatalan orthographyLike those of many other Romance languages, the Catalan alphabet derives from the Latin alphabet and is largely based on the language’s phonology. The Catalan alphabet consists of the twenty-six letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet:...
uses the raised dot (called an "interpunctInterpunctAn interpunct —also called an interpoint—is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script, which also appears in some modern languages as a stand-alone sign inside a word. It is present in Unicode as code point ....
") to distinguish a geminated l from a palatal llLlLl/ll is a digraph which occurs in several natural languages.-In English:In English, ll represents the same sound as single l:...
.
Thus, paral·lel ("parallel") and LlullRamon LlullRamon Llull was a Majorcan writer and philosopher, logician and tertiary Franciscan. He wrote the first major work of Catalan literature. Recently-surfaced manuscripts show him to have anticipated by several centuries prominent work on elections theory...
.
- In HungarianHungarian languageHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, digraphsDigraph (orthography)A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
(e.g. sz /s/) are geminated by doubling the first letter only, thus ssz (rather than szsz) /sː/. (For a complete list of Hungarian digraphs, see Hungarian orthography.)
- The only digraph in Ganda, ny /ɲ/ is doubled in the same way: nny /ɲː/.
- In ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, geminated instances of the sound [kw] (represented by the letter Q) are always indicated by writing cq, except in the word soqquadro, where the letter Q is doubled.
- In SwedishSwedish languageSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
and NorwegianNorwegian languageNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, the general rule is that a geminated consonant is written double, unless succeeded by another consonant. Hence hall ("hall"), but halt ("Halt!"). In Swedish This does not apply to morphological changes (so kall, "cold" and kallt, "coldly" or compounds [so tunnbröd ("flatbread")]. The exception are some words ending in -m, thus hem ["home"] [but hemma ("at home")] and stam ["stem"], but lamm ["lamb", to distinguish the word from lam ("lame")], with a long /a/), as well as adjectives in -nn, so tunn, "thin" but tunt, "thinly".
Other representations of double letters
Doubled orthographic consonants do not always indicate a long phonetic consonant.- In English, for example, the [n] sound of "running" is not lengthened. Consonant digraphs are used in English to indicate the preceding vowel is a short (lax) vowel, while a single letter often allows a long (tense) vowel to occur. For example, "tapping" /tæpɪŋ/ (from "tap") has a "short A" /æ/, which is distinct from the diphthong "long A" /eɪ/ in "taping" /teɪpɪŋ/ (from "tape").
- In Standard Modern GreekModern GreekModern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
, doubled orthographic consonants have no phonetic significance at all. - HangulHangulHangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
(Korean alphabet) and its romanizationKorean romanizationKorean romanization is a system for representing the Korean language using the Roman alphabet. In Korea, the Korean language is written using hangul, and sometimes hanja....
s also use double consonants, which indicate faucalized voiceFaucalized voiceFaucalized voice, also called hollow or yawny voice, is the production of speech sounds with an expanded laryngeal cavity. It contrasts with harsh voice, in which the larynx is compressed....
.
See also
- Syntactic doublingSyntactic doublingSyntactic gemination, or syntactic doubling, is an external sandhi phenomenon in Italian and some other Western Romance languages. It consists in the lengthening of the initial consonant after words of certain categories....
- West Germanic geminationWest Germanic GeminationWest Germanic gemination is a sound change that took place in all West Germanic languages, around 300 AD. All single consonants except were geminated before . The second element of the diphthongs iu and au was still underlyingly at this time and therefore was still considered a consonant, so...
- Glottal stopGlottal stopThe glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
- Length (phonetics)Length (phonetics)In phonetics, length or quantity is a feature of sounds that are distinctively longer than other sounds. There are long vowels as well as long consonants .Many languages do not have distinctive length...
- List of phonetic topics