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Catalan phonology

The phonology of Catalan, a Romance language, has a certain degree of dialectal variation. Although there are two main dialects, one based on Eastern Catalan and one based on Valencian, this article deals with features of all or most dialects as well as regional pronunciation differences. Various studies have focused on different Catalan varieties; for example, and analyze Central Eastern varieties—the former focusing on the educated speech of Barcelona and the latter focusing more on the vernacular of Barcelona— and does a careful phonetic study of Central Eastern Catalan.

Catalan shares features with neighboring Romance languages (Italian, Sardinian, Occitan, Spanish).

Consonants

Catalan consonants
		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m			n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	voiceless	p		t
Plosive	voiced	b		d
Affricate	voiceless				(ts)	(tɕ)
Affricate	voiced				(dz)	(dʑ)
Fricative	voiceless		f		s	ɕ
Fricative	voiced		(v)		z	ʑ
Trill					r
Tap					ɾ
Approximant						j	w
Lateral					l	ʎ

Phonetic notes: /t/ and /d/ are denti-alveolar, having both dental and alveolar contact with the tongue. /n/, /l/, and /ɾ/ are "front alveolar;" /s/ and /r/ are "back alveolar" (or postalveolar); /ʎ/ and /ɲ/ are "front alveolo-palatal"; and /ɕ/, /ʑ/, /tɕ/ and /dʑ/ are "back alveolo-palatal.

Plosives: Voiced plosives become lenited (that is, fricatives or approximants of the same place of articulation) "only in syllable onsets, after continuants. Exceptions include /d/ after lateral consonants and /b/ after /f/: ull de bou ('round window'); bolígraf boníssim ('excellent ballpoint'). In the coda position, these sounds are always realized as plosives except in Valencian, where they are lenited.

/b/ and /g/ may be geminated in certain environments (poble [ˈpɔbblə] 'village').

In Majorcan varieties, /k/ and /g/ become [c] and [ɟ] word-finally and before front vowels; in some of these dialects, this has extended to all environments except before liquids and back vowels [ˈbanʲc] ('bench').

Affricates: The phonemic status of affricates is dubious; after other consonants, affricates are in free variation with fricatives, e.g. clenxa [ˈklɛnʲtɕə] ~ [ˈklɛnʲɕə] ('hair parting') and may be analyzed as either single phonemes or clusters of a stop and a fricative.

Alveolar affricates occur the least of all affricates.

/dz/ only occurs intervocalically.
Instances of /ts/ arise mostly from compounding; the few lexical instances arise from historical compounding. For instance, potser [puˈtse] ('maybe') comes from pot ('may') + ser ('be' inf). As such, /ts/ does not occur word-initially, but it may occur finally in cases of heteromorphemic plural endings: tots [tots] ('everybody').

The distribution of alveo-palatal affricates (/tɕ/ and /dʑ/) depends on dialect:

In Standard Eastern Catalan, word-initial /tɕ/ is found only in a few words of foreign origin (txec 'Czech') while being found freely intervocalically and word-finally.
Standard Eastern Catalan also only allows intervocalic /dʑ/. Phonemic analyses show word-final occurrences, but final devoicing eliminates this from the surface.
In various other dialects (as well as in emphatic speech), /tɕ/ occurs word-initially and after another consonant to the exclusion of /ɕ/. These instances of word-initial /tɕ/ seem to correspond to /ɕ/ of other dialects, including the standard (on which the orthography is based): xinxa ('bedbug'), pronounced [ˈɕinʲɕə] in the standard, is [ˈtɕinʲtɕə] in these varieties.
Similarly, in Valencia and southern Catalonia, all occurrences of /dʑ/ correspond to the voiced fricative /ʑ/ in other dialects.

There is dialectal variation in regards to affricate length, with long affricates occurring in both Eastern and Western dialects such as in Majorca and specific Northern and Southern Valencian areas and short affricates being otherwise widespread throughout Valencia. Also, intervocalic affricates are predominately long, especially those that are voiced or occurring immediately after a stressed syllable (fletxa [ˈflet.tɕə] 'arrow').

Fricatives: /v/ only occurs in Balearic and southern Valencian as well as northern Valencian and southern Catalonia. Everywhere else, it has merged with /b/. In Majorcan, [v] and [w] are in complementary distribution, with [v] occurring before vowels (e.g. blava [ˈblavə] 'blue' fem. vs blau [blaw] 'blue' masc.). In other varieties that have both sounds, they are in contrast before vowels, with neutralization in favor of [w] before consonants.

In Valencian, /s/ and /ɕ/ are auditorily similar such that neutralization may occur in the future. In Northern Valencian, /ɕ/ is depalatalized to [jsʲ] or [js] as in caixa [ˈkajsə] ('box'), Central Valencian words like mig ('half') and leig have been transcribed with [ts] rather than [tɕ], and Southern Valencian /tɕ/ "has been reported to undergo depalatalization without merging with [ts]" as in baixar ('to go down').

Sonorants: While "dark" (velarized) [ɫ] may be a positional allophone of /l/ in most dialects (such as in the syllable coda), /l/ is dark irrespective of position in Eastern dialects like Majorcan.

In careful speech, /n/, /m/, and /l/ may be geminated (e.g. innecessari [innəsəˈsaɾi] 'unnecessary'; immens [imˈmɛns] 'huge'; il·lusió [iɫɫuˈzio] 'illusion'). A geminated /ʎʎ/ may also occur (e.g. espatlla [əsˈpaʎʎə] 'shoulder').

Vowels

Catalan possesses seven vowel phonemes (see chart at right). In unstressed syllables, /e/, /ɛ/, and /a/ are reduced to [ə] while /o/ and /ɔ/ are reduced to [u]. In Western Catalan dialects, [e], [o], and [a] may appear in unstressed syllables as well.

In Majorcan, [ə] appears in stressed position.

There are also a number of phonetic diphthongs, all of which begin (rising diphthongs) or end (falling diphthongs) in [j] or [w]:

[ej]	rei	'king'	[ɛw]	peu	'foot'
[uj]	avui	'today'	[ow]	pou	'well'
[ja]	iaia	'grandma'	[wa]	quatre	'four'
[jɛ]	veiem	'we see'	[wə]	aigua	'water'

Catalan also possesses two sets of diphthongs in variation; [wi] varies with [uj] (as in afluixar [aflujˈɕa~aflwiˈɕa] 'to loosen') and [iw] with [ju].

Processes

There are certain instances of compensatory diphthongization in Majorcan so that /ˈtroncs/ ('logs') (in addition to deleting the palatal plosive) develops a compensating palatal glide and surfaces as [ˈtrojns] (and contrasts with the unpluralized [ˈtronʲc]). Diphthongization compensates for the loss of the palatal stop (segment loss compensation). There are other cases where diphthongization compensates for the loss of point of articulation features (property loss compensation) as in [ˈaɲ] ('year') vs [ˈajns] ('years').

The dialectal distribution of compensatory diphthongization is almost entirely dependent on the dorsal plosive (/k~c/) and the extent of consonant assimilation (whether or not it's extended to palatals).

Voiced affricates are devoiced after stressed vowels in dialects like Eastern Catalan where there may be a correlation between devoicing and lengthening (Gemination) of voiced affricates: metge ('doctor') /ˈmeddʑə/ → [ˈmettɕə]. In Barcelona, voiced plosives may be geminated and devoiced (poble [ˈpɔppɫə] 'village').

Prosody

Stress

Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word. Compound words and adverbs formed with |ˈment| may have more than one stressed syllable (e.g. parallamps [ˌpaɾəˈʎams] 'lightning conductor'; bonament [ˌbɔnəˈmen] 'willingly') but every lexical word has just one stressed syllable.

Phonotactics

Any consonant, as well as [j] and [w] may be an onset. Clusters may consist of a consonant plus a semivowel (C[j], C[w]) or an obstruent plus a liquid. Some speakers may have one of these obstruent-plus-liquid clusters preceding a semivowel, e.g. síndria [ˈsin.dɾjə] ('watermelon'); for other speakers, this is pronounced as [ˈsin.dɾi.ə] (i.e. the semivowel must be syllabic in this context).

Word-medial codas are restricted to one consonant + [s] (extra [ˈɛks.tɾə]). In the coda position, voice contrasts among obstruents are neutralized. Although there are exceptions (such as futur [fuˈtuɾ] 'future'), syllable-final /ɾ/ is often lost before a word boundary or before the plural morpheme of most words: color [kuˈɫo] ('color') vs. coloraina [kuluˈɾajnə].

In Catalan, obstruents fail to surface word-finally when preceded by a homorganic consonant (e.g. ). Complex codas simplify only if the loss of the segment doesn’t result in the loss of place specification.

Suffixation examples
	Final	Internal	Gloss
no cluster	[ˈkam]	[kəmˈpɛt]	'field'
	[ˈpun]	[punˈtɛt]	'point'
	[ˈbaŋ]	[bəŋˈkɛt]	'bank'
	[məˈlal]	[mələlˈtɛt]	'ill, sick'
	[ˈɔr]	[urˈtɛt]	'orchard'
	[ˈgus]	[gusˈtɛt]	'taste'
cluster	[ˈserp]	[sərˈpɛt]	'snake'
	[ˈdisk]	[disˈkɛt]	'disk'
	[ˈmɔɫk]	n/a	'I grind'

When the dimunitive [ˈɛt] is added to [ˈkam] it makes [kəmˈpɛt], which makes it seem as though the underlying representation is |ˈkamp| (with subsequent cluster simplification), however when the copula [ˈes] is added it makes [ˈkəmˈes]. The resulting generalization is that this underlying /p/ will only surface in a morphologically complex word.

Word-final fricatives (except /f/) are voiced before a following vowel, e.g. bus enorme ('huge diver'). In Majorcan and Minorcan Catalan, /f/ undergoes total assimilation to a following consonant (just as stops do): buf gros ('large puff').

Dialectal variation

The differences in the vocalic systems outlined above are the main criteria used to differentiate between the major dialects: distinguishes two major dialect groups, Western dialects and Eastern ones; the latter of which only allow [i], [ə], and [u] to appear in unstressed syllables and include North Catalan, Central Catalan, Balearic, and Alguerese. Western dialects, which allow any vowel in unstressed syllables, include northern and western Catalan, and Valencian.

Historical development

As a Romance language, Catalan comes directly from Vulgar Latin. As such, it shares certain phonological changes from Latin with other Romance languages:

/b/ and /w/ between vowels became [β].
/d/ became [ð] between vowels in Iberia, Gaul, Raetia, northern Italy, and a part of Sardinia. /dr/ also became lenited in Iberia and Gaul.
Intervocalic sounds were often voiced (circa fifth century AD).
The velars /k/ and /g/ became palatalized before front vowels.

by the fourth century, palatal /g/ had become more of a palatal approximant. When following a vowel and preceding a stressed vowel, this approximant became fused with the following front vowel: /maˈgister/ → [maˈjɪster] → [maˈester] → [ˈmastiɾ]. In the Iberian peninsula, southwestern Gaul, and portions of Sardinia, Sicily, and southwestern Italy, this palatal approximant stage was retained while other dialects made different developments.
Palatal /k/, which had developed a palatal offglide, continued to advance further forward in the mouth to become [tʲj] (which led to some confusion between /kj/ and /tj/; by the sixth or seventh century, this palatalized coronal had become an affricate ([tʲsʲ] or [ts]).
/sk/ was also part of this palatalization

Before or after another consonant /l/ was velarized (leading to l-vocalization in some dialects. After consonants, this may have lead to the realization of a palatal lateral in Spanish and Italian.
/kʷ/ became /k/ before /u/ and /o/ by the first century.
Intervocalic pretonic /g/ was deleted in most words.
/h/ was deleted, first when medial and then in all contexts soon after.
/m/ and /n/ became silent word-finally (presumably after an intermediate state of being realized as the nasalization of the preceding vowel); the latter also being lost in the coda position before /s/.
/ks/ was reduced to /s/ before or after another consonant. By analogy, the prefix ex- before vowels may have also been pronounced /es/. Later on, /ks/ was also reduced word-finally except in monosyllabic words.
/sj/, /lj/ and /nj/ became palatal between vowels.
stressed /e/ and /i/, when immediately followed by a vowel of the penultimate syllable, became /j/; /u/ in the same environment became /w/.
/ss/ after diphthongs and long vowels reduced to /s/ (degeminated): /kaːssus/ → /kaːsus/. There was just general confusion in regards to geminated consonants but they were normally retained after long vowels.
Short /i/ and /u/ became [e] and [o], probably by the first century AD. Also, vowel quantity between short mid-vowels and long mid-vowels became differentiated: /deus/ → [dɛus].
/n/, followed by a fricative (/f/, /ʒ/, /s/, or /v/), was deleted and replaced by the lengthening of the previous vowel: /kensor/ → /tʃeːsor/.
Eventually (in Spain and parts of Gaul), all stressed vowels were pronounced long while unstressed vowels were short. The new long vowels were pronounced in most regions with diphthongization although Portugal, southern Gaul, Lombardy, and Sicily didn’t participate in this early breaking. The vowels most affected were /ɛː/ and /ɔː/.
Vowels were often syncopated.