In
phonetics and
phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''
gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a
consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from
stress. Gemination is represented in many writing systems by a
doubled letter
A digraph or digram (from the grc, δίς , "double" and , "to write") is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme (distinct sound), or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to ...
and is often perceived as a doubling of the consonant.
[William Ham, ''Phonetic and Phonological Aspects of Geminate Timing'', p. 1-18] Some phonological theories use "doubling" as a synonym for gemination, others describe two distinct phenomena.
Consonant length is a distinctive feature in certain languages, such as
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
,
Berber,
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
,
Estonian
Estonian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe
* Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent
* Estonian language
* Estonian cuisine
* Estonian culture
See also
*
...
,
Hindi,
Hungarian,
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional It ...
,
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
,
Kannada,
Punjabi
Punjabi, or Panjabi, most often refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to Punjab, a region in India and Pakistan
* Punjabi language
* Punjabi people
* Punjabi dialects and languages
Punjabi may also refer to:
* Punjabi (horse), a British Th ...
,
Polish and
Turkish. Other languages, such as
English, do not have word-internal phonemic consonant geminates.
Consonant gemination and vowel length are independent in languages like Arabic, Japanese, Finnish and Estonian; however, in languages like Italian,
Norwegian and
Swedish, vowel length and consonant length are interdependent. For example, in Norwegian and Swedish, a geminated consonant is always preceded by a short vowel, while an ungeminated consonant is preceded by a long vowel. A clear example are the Norwegian words ('ceiling or roof' of a building), and ('thanks').
Phonetics
Lengthened
fricatives,
nasals
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast major ...
,
laterals,
approximants and
trills are simply prolonged. In lengthened
stops
Stop may refer to:
Places
*Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States
* Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Facilities
* Bus stop
* Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck dri ...
, the obstruction of the airway is prolonged, which delays release, and the "hold" is lengthened.
In terms of consonant duration, Berber and Finnish are reported to have a 3-to-1 ratio,
compared with around 2-to-1 (or lower) in Japanese,
[ (URL is author's "near final version" draft)] Italian, and Turkish.
Phonology
Gemination of consonants is distinctive in some languages and then is subject to various phonological constraints that depend on the language.
In some languages, like Italian, Swedish,
Faroese,
Icelandic, and
Luganda, consonant length and vowel length depend on each other. A short vowel within a stressed syllable almost always precedes a long consonant or a consonant cluster, and a long vowel must be followed by a short consonant. In
Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
, a
long vowel was lengthened even more before permanently-geminate
consonants.
In other languages, such as
Finnish, consonant length and vowel length are independent of each other. In Finnish, both are phonemic; 'back', 'fireplace' and 'burden' are different, unrelated words. Finnish consonant length is also affected by
consonant gradation
Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation (mostly lenition but also assimilation) found in some Uralic languages, more specifically in the Finnic, Samic and Samoyedic branches. It originally arose as an allophonic alternation bet ...
. Another important phenomenon is
sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
, which produces long consonants at word boundaries when there is an
archiphonemic
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
glottal stop > 'take it!'
In addition, in some Finnish compound words, if the initial word ends in an , the initial consonant of the following word is geminated: 'trash bag' , 'welcome' . In certain cases, a after a is geminated by most people: 'screw' , 'baby' . In the
Tampere dialect, if a word receives gemination of after , the is often deleted ( , ), and 'Saturday', for example, receives a medial , which can in turn lead to deletion of ( ).
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,
Moroccan Arabic, a few
Romance languages such as
Sicilian and
Neapolitan
Neapolitan means of or pertaining to Naples, a city in Italy; or to:
Geography and history
* Province of Naples, a province in the Campania region of southern Italy that includes the city
* Duchy of Naples, in existence during the Early and Hig ...
as well as many
High Alemannic German dialects, such as that of
Thurgovia
Thurgau (; french: Thurgovie; it, Turgovia), anglicized as Thurgovia, more formally the Canton of Thurgau, is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of five districts and its capital is Frauenfeld.
Thurgau is part ...
. Some African languages, such as
Setswana and
Luganda, also have initial consonant length: it is very common in Luganda and indicates certain
grammatical
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to form ...
features. In
colloquial Finnish
Colloquial or spoken Finnish () refers to the unstandardized spoken variety of the Finnish language, in contrast with the standardized form of the language (). It is used primarily in personal communication and varies somewhat between the differen ...
and in
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional It ...
, long consonants occur in specific instances as sandhi phenomena.
The difference between singleton and geminate consonants varies within and across languages.
Sonorants show more distinct geminate-to-singleton ratios while
sibilants have less distinct ratios. The
bilabial
In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a labial consonant articulated with both lips.
Frequency
Bilabial consonants are very common across languages. Only around 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tlin ...
and
alveolar geminates are generally longer than
velar
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the velum).
Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive a ...
ones.
The reverse of gemination reduces a long consonant to a short one, which is called ''degemination''. It is a pattern in Baltic-Finnic
consonant gradation
Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation (mostly lenition but also assimilation) found in some Uralic languages, more specifically in the Finnic, Samic and Samoyedic branches. It originally arose as an allophonic alternation bet ...
that the strong grade (often the
nominative) form of the word is degeminated into a weak grade (often all the other cases) form of the word: > (burden, of the burden). As a historical restructuring at the
phonemic level, word-internal long consonants degeminated in
Western Romance
Western Romance languages are one of the two subdivisions of a proposed subdivision of the Romance languages based on the La Spezia–Rimini Line. They include the Gallo-Romance and Iberian Romance branches. Gallo-Italic may also be include ...
languages: e.g. Spanish /ˈboka/ 'mouth' vs. Italian /ˈbokka/, both of which evolved from Latin /ˈbukka/.
Examples
Afroasiatic languages
Arabic
Written
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
indicates gemination with a diacritic (
) shaped like a lowercase Greek
omega
Omega (; capital letter, capital: Ω, lower case, lowercase: ω; Ancient Greek ὦ, later ὦ μέγα, Modern Greek ωμέγα) is the twenty-fourth and final letter in the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numerals, Greek numeric system/isopsephy ...
or a rounded Latin ''w'', called the
: . Written above the consonant that is to be doubled, the is often used to
disambiguate words that differ only in the doubling of a consonant where the word intended is not clear from the context. For example, in Arabic,
Form I verbs and
Form II verbs differ only in the doubling of the middle consonant of the triliteral root in the latter form, ''e. g.'', (with full diacritics: ) is a Form I verb meaning ''to study'', whereas (with full diacritics: ) is the corresponding Form II verb, with the middle consonant doubled, meaning ''to teach''.
Berber
In
Berber, each consonant has a geminate counterpart, and gemination is lexically contrastive. The distinction between single and geminate consonants is attested in medial position as well as in absolute initial and final positions.
* 'say'
* 'those in question'
* 'earth, soil'
* 'loss'
* 'mouth'
* 'mother'
* 'hyena'
* 'he was quiet'
* 'pond, lake, oasis'
* 'brown buzzard, hawk'
In addition to lexical geminates, Berber also has phonologically-derived and morphologically-derived geminates . Phonologically-derived geminates can surface by concatenation (e.g. 'give him two!') or by complete assimilation (e.g. 'he will touch you'). The morphological alternations include imperfective gemination, with some Berber verbs forming their
imperfective stem by geminating one consonant in their perfective stem (e.g. 'go! PF', 'go! IMPF'), as well as quantity alternations between singular and plural forms (e.g. 'hand', 'hands').
Austronesian languages
Austronesian languages in the
Philippines,
Micronesia, and
Sulawesi are known to have geminate consonants.
[Blust, Robert. (2013). ''The Austronesian Languages (Rev. ed.)''. Australian National University.]
Kavalan
The
Formosan language
The Formosan languages are a geographic grouping comprising the languages of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, all of which are Austronesian. They do not form a single subfamily of Austronesian but rather nine separate subfamilies. The Taiwa ...
Kavalan makes use of gemination to mark intensity, as in 'bad' vs. 'very bad'.
Malay dialects
Word-initial gemination occurs in various
Malay dialects, particularly those found on the east coast of the
Malay Peninsula such as
Kelantan-Pattani Malay and
Terengganu Malay. Gemination in these dialects of Malay occurs for various purposes such as:
* To form a shortened free variant of a word or phrase so that:
** > 'give'
** > 'to/at/from the shore'
* A replacement of
reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwar ...
for its
various uses (e.g. to denote plural, to form a different word, etc.) in Standard Malay so that:
** > 'children'
** > 'kite'
Tuvaluan
The
Polynesian language Tuvaluan allows for word-initial geminates, such as 'overcooked'.
Indo-European languages
English
In
English phonology, consonant length is not distinctive within
root word
A root (or root word) is the core of a word that is irreducible into more meaningful elements. In morphology, a root is a morphologically simple unit which can be left bare or to which a prefix or a suffix can attach. The root word is the prima ...
s. For instance, ''baggage'' is pronounced , not . However, phonetic gemination does occur marginally.
Gemination is found 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
stop.
For instance:
* b: ''subbasement''
* d: ''midday''
* f: ''life force''
* g: ''egg girl''
* k: ''bookkeeper''
* l: ''guileless''
* m: ''calm man'' or ''roommate'' (in some dialects) or ''prime minister''
* n: ''evenness''
* p: ''lamppost'' (cf. lamb post, compost)
* r: ''fire road''
* s: ''misspell'' or ''this saddle''
* sh: ''fish shop''
* t: ''cattail''
* th: ''both thighs''
* v: ''live voter''
* z: ''pays zero''
With
affricate
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair ...
s, however, this does not occur. For instance:
* ''orange juice''
In most instances, the absence of this doubling does not affect the meaning, though it may confuse the listener momentarily. The following
minimal pairs represent examples where the doubling ''does'' affect the meaning in most accents:
* ''ten nails'' versus ''ten ales''
* ''this sin'' versus ''this inn''
* ''five valleys'' versus ''five alleys''
* ''his zone'' versus ''his own''
* ''mead day'' versus ''me-day''
* ''unnamed'' versus ''unaimed''
* ''forerunner'' versus ''foreigner'' (only in some varieties of General American)
In some dialects gemination is also found for some words when the suffix ''-ly'' follows a root ending in -l or -ll, as in:
* ''solely''
but not
* ''usually''
In some varieties of
Welsh English, the process takes place indiscriminately between vowels, e.g. in ''money'' but it also applies with graphemic duplication (thus, orthographically dictated), e.g. ''butter''
French
In French, gemination is usually not phonologically relevant and therefore does not allow words to be distinguished: it mostly corresponds to an accent of insistence ("c'est terrifiant" realised
�tɛʁ.ʁi.fjɑ̃, or meets hyper-correction criteria: one "corrects" one's pronunciation, despite the usual phonology, to be closer to a realization that one imagines to be more correct: thus, the word illusion is sometimes pronounced
l.lyˈzjɔ̃by influence of the spelling.
However, gemination is distinctive in a few cases. Statements such as She said ~ She said it /ɛl a di/ ~ /ɛl l‿a di/ can commonly be distinguished by gemination. In a more sustained pronunciation, gemination distinguishes the conditional (and possibly the future tense) from the imperfect: ''courrai'' (will run) /kuʁ.ʁɛ/ vs. ''courais'' (ran) /ku.ʁɛ/, or the indicative from the subjunctive, as in ''croyons'' (we believe) /kʁwa.jɔ̃ / vs. ''croyions'' (we believed) /kʁwaj.jɔ̃ /.
Greek
In
Ancient Greek, consonant length was distinctive, e.g., 'I am of interest' vs. 'I am going to'. The distinction has been lost in the
standard Standard may refer to:
Symbols
* Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs
* Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification
Norms, conventions or requirements
* Standard (metrology), an object ...
and most other
varieties, with the exception of
Cypriot (where it might carry over from Ancient Greek or arise from a number of synchronic and diachronic assimilatory processes, or even spontaneously), some varieties of the southeastern Aegean, and
Italy.
Hindustani
Gemination is common in both
Hindi and
Urdu. It does not occur after long vowels and is found in words of both Indic and Arabic origin, but not in those of Persian origin. In Urdu, gemination is represented by the
Shadda
Shaddah ( ar, شَدّة ' , " ign ofemphasis", also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ' "emphasis") is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a geminated consonant. It is functionally equivalent t ...
diacritic, which is usually omitted from writings, and mainly written to clear ambiguity. In Hindi, gemination is represented by doubling the geminated consonant, enjoined with the
Virama diacritic.
=Aspirated consonants
=
Gemination of aspirated consonants in Hindi are formed by combining the corresponding non-aspirated consonant followed by its aspirated counterpart. In vocalised Urdu, the
shadda
Shaddah ( ar, شَدّة ' , " ign ofemphasis", also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ' "emphasis") is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a geminated consonant. It is functionally equivalent t ...
is placed on the unaspirated consonant followed by the
short vowel diacritic, followed by the ''
do-cashmī hē'', which aspirates the preceding consonant. There are few examples where an aspirated consonant is truly doubled.
Italian
Italian is notable among the
Romance languages for its extensive geminated consonants. In
Standard Italian
Italian (''italiano'' or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Together with Sardinian, Italian is the least divergent language from Latin. Spoken by about 85 ...
, word-internal geminates are usually written with two consonants, and geminates are distinctive. For example, , meaning 'he/she drank', is phonemically and pronounced , while ('he/she drinks/is drinking') is , pronounced . Tonic syllables are
bimoraic and are therefore composed of either a long vowel in an open syllable (as in ) or a short vowel in a closed syllable (as in ). In varieties with post-vocalic
weakening of some consonants (e.g. → 'reason'), geminates are not affected ( → 'May').
Double or long consonants occur not only within words but also at word boundaries, and they are then pronounced but not necessarily written: + = ('who knows') and ('I am going home') . All consonants except can be geminated. This word-initial gemination is triggered either lexically by the item preceding the lengthening consonant (e.g. by preposition 'to, at' in
kˈkaːsa 'homeward' but not by definite article in
a ˈkaːsa 'the house'), or by any word-final stressed vowel ([] 's/he spoke French' but [] 'I speak French').
Latin
In Latin, consonant length was distinctive, as in 'old woman' vs. 'year'.
Vowel length was also distinctive in Latin, but was not reflected in the orthography. Geminates inherited from Latin still exist in
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional It ...
, in which and contrast with regard to and as in Latin. It has been almost completely lost in
French and completely in
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
** Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
**Romanian cuisine, traditiona ...
. In
West Iberian languages
West Iberian is a branch of the Ibero-Romance languages that includes the Castilian languages ( Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Extremaduran (sometimes) and Loreto-Ucayali), Astur-Leonese ( Asturian, Leonese, Mirandese, Extremaduran (sometimes) and ...
, former Latin geminate consonants often evolved to new phonemes, including some instances of
nasal vowels in
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
and Old
Galician as well as most cases of and in Spanish, but phonetic length of both consonants and vowels is no longer distinctive.
Nepali
In
Nepali
Nepali or Nepalese may refer to :
Concerning Nepal
* Anything of, from, or related to Nepal
* Nepali people, citizens of Nepal
* Nepali language, an Indo-Aryan language found in Nepal, the current official national language and a language spoken ...
, all consonants have geminate counterparts except for . Geminates occur only medially. Examples:
* – 'equal' ; – 'honour'
* – 'disturb!' ; – 'authority'
* – 'cook!' ; – 'certain'
Norwegian
In
Norwegian, gemination is indicated in writing by double consonants. Gemination often differentiates between unrelated words. As in Italian, Norwegian uses short vowels before doubled consonants and long vowels before single consonants. There are qualitative differences between short and long vowels:
* / – 'method' / 'must'
* / – 'to search' / 'to take off'
* / – 'theirs' / 'anger'
Polish
In
Polish, consonant length is indicated with two identical letters. Examples:
* – 'bathtub'
*
* – 'horror'
* or – 'hobby'
Consonant length is distinctive and sometimes is necessary to distinguish words:
* – 'families'; – 'familial'
* – 'sacks, bags'; – 'mammals',
* – 'medicines'; – 'light, lightweight'
Double consonants are common on morpheme borders where the initial or final sound of the suffix is the same as the final or initial sound of the stem (depending on the position of the suffix). Examples:
* – 'before, previously'; from (suffix 'before') + (archaic 'that')
* – 'give back'; from (suffix 'from') + ('give')
* – 'swampy'; from ('swamp') + (suffix forming adjectives)
* – 'brightest'; from (suffix forming superlative) + ('brighter')
Punjabi
Punjabi
Punjabi, or Panjabi, most often refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to Punjab, a region in India and Pakistan
* Punjabi language
* Punjabi people
* Punjabi dialects and languages
Punjabi may also refer to:
* Punjabi (horse), a British Th ...
is written in two scripts, namely,
Gurmukhi and
Shahmukhi. Both scripts indicate gemination through the uses of diacritics. In Gurmukhi the diacritic is called the which is written ''before'' the geminated consonant and is mandatory. In contrast, the ''
shadda
Shaddah ( ar, شَدّة ' , " ign ofemphasis", also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ' "emphasis") is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a geminated consonant. It is functionally equivalent t ...
'', which is used to represent gemination in the
Shahmukhi script, is not necessarily written, retaining the tradition of the original
Arabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...
and
Persian language, where diacritics are usually omitted from writing, except to clear ambiguity, and is written ''above'' the geminated consonant. In the cases of
aspirated consonant
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with t ...
s in the
Shahmukhi script, the ''
shadda
Shaddah ( ar, شَدّة ' , " ign ofemphasis", also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ' "emphasis") is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a geminated consonant. It is functionally equivalent t ...
'' remains on the consonant, not on the
''do-cashmī he''.
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:
Russian
In
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
* Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and p ...
, consonant length (indicated with two letters, as in 'bathtub') may occur in several situations.
Minimal pairs
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate th ...
(or
chroneme
In linguistics, a chroneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant. The noun ''chroneme'' is derived , and the suffixed ''-eme'', which is analogous to the ''-eme'' in ''phoneme'' ...
s) exist, such as 'to hold' vs 'to support', and their conjugations, or 'length' vs 'long' adj. f.
*
Word formation or
conjugation
Conjugation or conjugate may refer to:
Linguistics
*Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form
* Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language
Mathematics
*Complex conjugation, the change ...
: ( 'length') > ( 'long') This occurs when two adjacent morphemes have the same consonant and is comparable to the situation of Polish described above.
*
Assimilation. The spelling usually reflects the unassimilated consonants, but they are pronounced as a single long consonant.
** ( 'highest').
Spanish
There are phonetic geminate consonants in Caribbean Spanish due to the assimilation of /l/ and /ɾ/ in syllabic coda to the following consonant. Examples of Cuban Spanish:
Luganda
Luganda is unusual in that gemination can occur word-initially, as well as word-medially. For example, 'cat', 'grandfather' and 'madam' all begin with geminate consonants.
There are three consonants that cannot be geminated: , and . Whenever
morphological rules would geminate these consonants, and are prefixed with , and changes to . For example:
* 'army' (root) > 'an army' (noun)
* 'stone' (root) > 'a stone' (noun); is usually spelt
* 'nation' (root) > 'a nation' (noun)
* 'medicine' (root) > 'medicine' (noun)
Japanese
In
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
, consonant length is distinctive (as is vowel length). Gemination in the
syllabary is represented with the
sokuon
The is a Japanese symbol in the form of a small hiragana or katakana '' tsu''. In less formal language it is called or , meaning "small ''tsu''". It serves multiple purposes in Japanese writing.
Appearance
In both hiragana and katakana, t ...
, a small :
for
hiragana in native words and for
katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fro ...
in foreign words. For example, (, ) means 'came; arrived', while (, ) means 'cut; sliced'. With the influx of ''
gairaigo'' ('foreign words') into Modern Japanese,
voiced consonants
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced.
The term, however, is used to refer ...
have become able to geminate as well: () means '(computer) bug', and () means 'bag'. Distinction between
voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
gemination and
voiced gemination is visible in pairs of words such as (, meaning 'kit') and (, meaning 'kid'). In addition, in some variants of colloquial Modern Japanese, gemination may be applied to some adjectives and adverbs (regardless of voicing) in order to add emphasis: (, 'amazing') contrasts with (, '
''really'' amazing'); (, , 'with all one's strength') contrasts with (, , really'' with all one's strength').
Turkish
In
Turkish gemination is indicated by two identical letters as in most languages that have phonemic gemination.
*
*
Loanwords originally ending with a phonemic geminated
consonant are always written and pronounced without the ending gemination as in Arabic.
* (
hajj
The Hajj (; ar, حَجّ '; sometimes also spelled Hadj, Hadji or Haj in English) is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims. Hajj is a mandatory religious duty for Muslims that must be carried o ...
) (from Arabic pronounced )
* (
Islamic calligraphy) (from Arabic pronounced )
Although gemination is resurrected when the word takes a suffix.
* becomes ('to hajj') when it takes the suffix "-a" ('to', indicating destination)
* becomes ('of calligraphy') when it takes the suffix "-ın" ('of', expressing possession)
Gemination also occurs when a
suffix starting with a consonant comes after a word that ends with the same consonant.
* ('hand') + ("-s", marks
plural) = ('hands'). (contrasts with , 's/he eliminates')
* ('to throw') + ("-ed", marks
past tense,
first person plural) = ('we threw
mth.). (contrasts with , 'waste')
Malayalam
In
Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...
, compounding is phonologically conditioned so gemination occurs at words' internal boundaries.
Consider following example:
* + ( + ) – ()
Gemination also occurs in a single morpheme like () which has a different meaning from ().
Uralic languages
Estonian
Estonian
Estonian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe
* Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent
* Estonian language
* Estonian cuisine
* Estonian culture
See also
*
...
has three phonemic lengths; however, the third length is a
suprasegmental
In linguistics, prosody () is concerned with elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, st ...
feature, which is as much tonal patterning as a length distinction. It is traceable to
allophony
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...
caused by now-deleted suffixes, for example half-long < * 'of the city' vs. overlong < * < * 'to the city'.
Finnish
Consonant length is phonemic in
Finnish, for example ('fireplace', transcribed with the length sign or with a doubled letter ) and ('back'). Consonant gemination occurs with simple consonants ( : ) and between syllables in the pattern (consonant)-vowel-sonorant-stop-stop-vowel () but not generally in codas or with longer syllables. (This occurs in
Sami languages
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
and in the Finnish name , which is of Sami origin.)
Sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
often produces geminates.
Both consonant and vowel gemination are phonemic, and both occur independently, e.g. , , , (Karelian surname, 'paint', 'model', and 'secular').
In Standard Finnish, consonant gemination of exists only in
interjections, new loan words and in the playful word
''hihhuli'', with its origins in the 19th century, and derivatives of that word.
In many Finnish dialects there are also the following types of special gemination in connection with long vowels: the southwestern special gemination (), with lengthening of stops + shortening of long vowel, of the type < ; the common gemination (), with lengthening of all consonants in short, stressed syllables, of the type > and its extension (which is strongest in the northwestern Savonian dialects); the eastern dialectal special gemination (), which is the same as the common gemination but also applies to unstressed syllables and certain clusters, of the types > and > .
Wagiman
In
Wagiman, an
indigenous Australian language
The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...
, consonant length in stops is the primary phonetic feature that differentiates
fortis and lenis
In linguistics, fortis and lenis ( and ; Latin for "strong" and "weak"), sometimes identified with tense and lax, are pronunciations of consonants with relatively greater and lesser energy, respectively. English has fortis consonants, such as th ...
stops. Wagiman does not have phonetic voice. Word-initial and word-final stops never contrast for length.
Writing
In
written language
A written language is the representation of a spoken or gestural language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will pick up spoken language or sign language by exposure even i ...
, 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
Shaddah ( ar, شَدّة ' , " ign ofemphasis", also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ' "emphasis") is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a geminated consonant. It is functionally equivalent t ...
in Arabic, the
dagesh
The dagesh () is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It was added to the Hebrew orthography at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points). It takes the form of a dot placed inside a Hebrew letter and has the effect of mod ...
in Classical Hebrew, or the
sokuon
The is a Japanese symbol in the form of a small hiragana or katakana '' tsu''. In less formal language it is called or , meaning "small ''tsu''". It serves multiple purposes in Japanese writing.
Appearance
In both hiragana and katakana, t ...
in
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
.
In the
International Phonetic Alphabet, long consonants are normally written using the
triangular colon , e.g. ''penne'' ('feathers', 'pens', also a kind of pasta), though doubled letters are also used (especially for underlying
phonemic
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
forms, or in tone languages to facilitate diacritic marking).
*
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
uses the raised dot (called an
interpunct) to distinguish a geminated from a palatal . Thus, ('parallel') and (Standard Catalan: , ).
*
Estonian
Estonian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe
* Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent
* Estonian language
* Estonian cuisine
* Estonian culture
See also
*
...
uses ''b'', ''d'', ''g'' for short consonants, and ''p'', ''t'', ''k'' and ''pp'', ''tt'', ''kk'' are used for long consonants.
*
Hungarian digraphs and trigraphs are geminated by doubling the first letter only, thus the geminate form of is (rather than *''szsz''), and that of is .
* The only digraph in
Ganda
Ganda may refer to:
Places
* Ganda, Angola
* Ganda, Tibet, China
* Ganda, the ancient Latin name of Ghent, a city in Belgium
Other uses
* Baganda or Ganda, a people of Uganda
** Luganda or Ganda language, a language of Uganda
* ''Ganda'' and "Ga ...
, is doubled in the same way: .
* In
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional It ...
, geminated instances of the sound cluster (represented by the digraph ) are always indicated by writing , except in the words and , where the letter is doubled.
The gemination of sounds , and , (spelled , , and , respectively) is not indicated because these consonants are always geminated when occurring between vowels. Also the sounds , (both spelled ) are always geminated when occurring between vowels, yet their gemination is sometimes shown, redundantly, by doubling the as, e.g., in .
*In Japanese, non-nasal gemination () is denoted by placing the "small" variant of the syllable ( or ) between two syllables, where the end syllable must begin with a consonant. For nasal gemination, precede the syllable with the letter for mora N ( or ). The script of these symbols must match with the surrounding syllables.
* In
Swedish and
Norwegian, the general rule is that a geminated consonant is written double, unless succeeded by another consonant. Hence ('hall'), but ('Halt!'). In Swedish, this does not apply to morphological changes (so , 'cold' and , 'coldly' or compounds
o ('flatbread') The exception are some words ending in ''-m'', thus
home' ut ('at home')and
stem' but
lamb', to distinguish the word from ('lame') with a long /), as well as adjectives in ''-nn'', so , 'thin' but , 'thinly' (while Norwegian has a rule always prohibiting two "m"s at the end of a word (with the exception being only a handful of proper names, and as a rule forms with suffixes reinsert the second "m", and the rule is that these word-final "m"s always cause the preceding vowel sound to be short (despite the spelling)).
Double letters that are not long consonants
Doubled orthographic consonants do not always indicate a long phonetic consonant.
* In English, for example, the 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'' (from ''tap'') has a short ''a'' , which is distinct from the diphthongal long ''a'' in ''taping'' (from ''tape'').
* In Standard
Modern Greek, doubled orthographic consonants have no phonetic significance at all.
*
Hangul (the Korean alphabet) and
its romanizations also use double consonants, but to indicate
fortis articulation, not gemination.
* In
Klallam, a sequence of two sounds such as in a word like 'sleep' is not pronounced like a geminated stop with a long closure duration – rather the sequence is pronounced as a sequence of two individual sounds such that the first is released before the articulation of the second .
See also
*
Syntactic gemination
*
West Germanic gemination
*
Glottal stop
*
Length (phonetics)
*
Vowel length
*
Syllabic consonant
*
Index of phonetics articles
A
* Acoustic phonetics
* Active articulator
* Affricate
* Airstream mechanism
* Alexander John Ellis
* Alexander Melville Bell
* Alfred C. Gimson
* Allophone
* Alveolar approximant ()
* Alveolar click ()
* Alveolar consonant
* Alveolar ejec ...
References
{{Suprasegmentals
Consonants
Phonetics