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Catalan phonology
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Language
Grammar
Phonology and orthography
Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua
Institut d'Estudis Catalans
History
History of Catalonia · Counts of Barcelona
Kingdom of Majorca · Kingdom of Valencia
Crown of Aragon · Military history of Catalonia
Catalan constitutions · Furs of Valencia
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Government and Politics
Generalitat de Catalunya
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Govern de les Illes Balears
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Politics of Catalonia
Catalanism
Traditions
Castells · Correfoc · Falles · Sardana ·
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La Renaixença · Noucentisme · Joaquim Sorolla
Salvador Dalí · Joan Miró · Antoni Tàpies
Santiago Calatrava
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, Wheeler (1979) and Mascaró (1976) analyze Central Eastern varieties—the former focusing on the educated speech of Barcelona and the latter focusing more on the vernacular of Barcelona— and Recasens (1986) does a careful phonetic study of Central Eastern Catalan.[1][2]
Catalan shares features with neighboring Romance languages (Italian, Sardinian, Occitan, Spanish).[3]
Consonants
Catalan consonants[4] Bilabial Labio-dental Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Plosive voiceless p t (c) ~ k
voiced b d (ɟ) ~ g
Affricate voiceless (ts) (tɕ)
voiced (dz) (dʑ)
Fricative voiceless f s ɕ
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."[5]
Plosives: Voiced plosives become lenited (that is, fricatives or approximants of the same place of articulation) "only in syllable onsets, after continuants."[6] Exceptions include /d/ after lateral consonants and /b/ after /f/: ull de bou [uʎ də ˈβɔw] ('round window'); bolígraf boníssim [buˈliɣɾəv buˈnisim] ('excellent ballpoint'). In the coda position, these sounds are always realized as plosives[7] except in Valencian, where they are lenited.[8]
/b/ and /g/ may be geminated in certain environments (poble [ˈpɔbblə] 'village').[9]
In Majorcan varieties, /k/ and /g/ become [c] and [ɟ] word-finally and before front vowels;[10] in some of these dialects, this has extended to all environments except before liquids and back vowels [ˈbanʲc] ('bench').[11]
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')[12] and may be analyzed as either single phonemes or clusters of a stop and a fricative.
- Alveolar affricates occur the least of all affricates.[13]
- /dz/ only occurs intervocalically.[14]
- Instances of /ts/ arise mostly from compounding; the few lexical instances arise from historical compounding.[15] For instance, potser [puˈtse][16] ('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').[17]
- The distribution of alveolo-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[18]), /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.[19]
- Similarly, in Valencia and southern Catalonia, all occurrences of /dʑ/ correspond to the voiced fricative /ʑ/ in other dialects.[20]
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.[21] Also, intervocalic affricates are predominately long, especially those that are voiced or occurring immediately after a stressed syllable (fletxa [ˈflet.tɕə] 'arrow').[22]
Fricatives: /v/ only occurs in Balearic[23] and southern Valencian as well as northern Valencian and southern Catalonia. Everywhere else, it has merged with /b/.[24] 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.[25]
In Valencian, /s/ and /ɕ/ are auditorily similar such that neutralization may occur in the future.[26] 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').[27]
Sonorants: While "dark" (velarized) [ɫ] may be a positional allophone of /l/ in most dialects (such as in the syllable coda[28]), /l/ is dark irrespective of position in Eastern dialects like Majorcan.[29]