In
phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
and
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''
gemini
Gemini may refer to:
Space
* Gemini (constellation), one of the constellations of the zodiac
** Gemini in Chinese astronomy
* Project Gemini, the second U.S. crewed spaceflight program
* Gemini Observatory, consisting of telescopes in the Norther ...
'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...
for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from
stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
. Gemination is represented in many writing systems by a
doubled letter 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,
Berber,
Danish,
Estonian,
Hindi
Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
,
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 Ita ...
,
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,
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
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
* Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
* Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including ...
and
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
, 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
A fricative is a consonant 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 t ...
,
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 majorit ...
,
laterals,
approximants and
trills are simply prolonged. In lengthened
stops, 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, a
long vowel was lengthened even more before permanently-geminate
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...
s.
In other languages, such as
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
, 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 betw ...
. Another important phenomenon is
sandhi, which produces long consonants at word boundaries when there is an
archiphonemic 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
Kelantan-Pattani Malay (; ; in Pattani; in Kelantan) is an Austronesian language of the Malayic subfamily spoken in the Malaysian state of Kelantan and the neighbouring southernmost provinces of Thailand. It is the primary spoken language of ...
,
Chuukese,
Moroccan Arabic, a few
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
such as
Sicilian and
Neapolitan as well as many
High Alemannic German
High Alemannic is a dialect of Alemannic German spoken in the westernmost Austrian state of Vorarlberg and in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
Language area
The High Alemannic dialects are spoken in Liechtenstein and in most of German-speaking S ...
dialects, such as that of
Thurgovia. Some African languages, such as
Setswana and
Luganda, also have initial consonant length: it is very common in Luganda and indicates certain
grammatical 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 Ita ...
, 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 Tli ...
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 betw ...
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 languages: e.g. Spanish /ˈboka/ 'mouth' vs. Italian /ˈbokka/, both of which evolved from Latin /ˈbukka/.
Examples
Afroasiatic languages
Arabic
Written
Arabic indicates gemination with a diacritic (
) shaped like a lowercase Greek
omega 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
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
,
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 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
The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family.
There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austro ...
Tuvaluan allows for word-initial geminates, such as 'overcooked'.
Indo-European languages
English
In
English phonology
Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar (but not identical) phonological system. Amon ...
, consonant length is not distinctive within
root words. 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
affricates, 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
Welsh English ( cy, Saesneg Gymreig) comprises the dialects of English spoken by Welsh people. The dialects are significantly influenced by Welsh grammar and often include words derived from Welsh. In addition to the distinctive words and gr ...
, 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
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
, 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 th ...
and most other
varieties
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
, 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
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
.
Hindustani
Gemination is common in both
Hindi
Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
and
. 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 to ...
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 to ...
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
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
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 m ...
, 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
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...
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 Ita ...
, in which and contrast with regard to and as in Latin. It has been almost completely lost in
French and completely in
Romanian. 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, all consonants have geminate counterparts except for . Geminates occur only medially. Examples:
* – 'equal' ; – 'honour'
* – 'disturb!' ; – 'authority'
* – 'cook!' ; – 'certain'
Norwegian
In
Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
* Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
* Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including ...
, 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 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 to ...
'', which is used to represent gemination in the
Shahmukhi script
Shahmukhi (, ) is a Perso-Arabic alphabet script used historically by Punjabi Muslims (primarily in present-day Pakistani Punjab) to write the Punjabi language. It is generally written in the Nastaʿlīq calligraphic hand, which is also used fo ...
, is not necessarily written, retaining the tradition of the original
Arabic script and
Persian language
Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken a ...
, where diacritics are usually omitted from writing, except to clear ambiguity, and is written ''above'' the geminated consonant. In the cases of
aspirated consonants in the
Shahmukhi script
Shahmukhi (, ) is a Perso-Arabic alphabet script used historically by Punjabi Muslims (primarily in present-day Pakistani Punjab) to write the Punjabi language. It is generally written in the Nastaʿlīq calligraphic hand, which is also used fo ...
, 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 to ...
'' 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 peo ...
, consonant length (indicated with two letters, as in 'bathtub') may occur in several situations.
Minimal pairs (or
chronemes) exist, such as 'to hold' vs 'to support', and their conjugations, or 'length' vs 'long' adj. f.
*
Word formation or
conjugation: ( '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, a small :
for
hiragana in native words and for
katakana in foreign words. For example, (, ) means 'came; arrived', while (, ) means 'cut; sliced'. With the influx of ''
gairaigo
is Japanese for " loan word", and indicates a transcription into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed in ancient times from Old or Middle Chinese (especially Literary Chine ...
'' ('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 gemination and
voiced
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 ...
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
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...
are always written and pronounced without the ending gemination as in Arabic.
* (
hajj) (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
The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
) = ('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 languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...
, 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 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
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 ''s ...
caused by now-deleted suffixes, for example half-long < * 'of the city' vs. overlong < * < * 'to the city'.
Finnish
Consonant length is phonemic in
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
, 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 and in the Finnish name , which is of Sami origin.)
Sandhi 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
interjection
An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curse ...
s, 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, 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.
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 eve ...
, 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 to ...
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 modi ...
in Classical Hebrew, or the
sokuon 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
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
, 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 uses the raised dot (called an
interpunct) to distinguish a geminated from a palatal . Thus, ('parallel') and (Standard Catalan: , ).
*
Estonian 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, 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 Ita ...
, 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
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
and
Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
* Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
* Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including ...
, 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
Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
, 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
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...
*
Syllabic consonant
*
Index of phonetics articles
References
{{Suprasegmentals
Consonants
Phonetics