Catalan phonology

The phonology of Catalan, a Romance language, has a certain degree of dialectal variation. Although there are two standard 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 (Occitan, Italian, Sardinian, French, Spanish). Notable features include:
 * Marked contrast of the vowel pairs and, as in other Western Romance languages, except Spanish.:
 * Lack of nasalized vowels, unlike Portuguese or French.
 * Lenition of voiced stops [b]→[β], [d]→[ð], [g]→[ɣ] as in Galician and Spanish.
 * Lack of diphthongization of Latin short ĕ, ŏ, as in Galician and Portuguese, and unlike French, Spanish and Italian.
 * Abundance of diphthongs containing, as in Galician and Portuguese.
 * Abundance of and  occurring at the end of words, as for instance moll (wet) and any (year), unlike Spanish, French or Italian.

In contrast with other Romance languages, Catalan has many monosyllabic words; and those ending in a wide variety consonants and some consonant clusters. Also, Catalan has final obstruent devoicing, thus featuring many couplets like amic ('male friend') vs. amiga ('female friend').

Consonants

 * , are laminal denti-alveolar, .  After  they are laminal alveolar ,.
 * , are velar, but they're fronted to pre-velar position before front vowels. In some Mallorcan dialects, the situation is reversed; the main realization is palatal, , but before liquids and rounded back vowels they are velar ,.
 * ,, are apical front alveolar , , , but the first two are laminal denti-alveolar ,  before , . In addition,  is postalveolar  or alveolo-palatal  before , , , , velar  before ,  and labiodental  before , , where it merges with . It also merges with  (to ) before ,.
 * ,, are apical back alveolar , , , also described as postalveolar.
 * , are apical alveolar, . They may be somewhat fronted, so that the stop component is laminal denti-alveolar, while the fricative component is apical post-dental.
 * , are laminal "front alveolo-palatal",.
 * There is some confusion in the literature about the precise phonetic characteristics of, , , . some sources generally describe them as "postalveolar." Others describe them as "back alveolo-palatal", implying that the characters $⟨⟩$ would be more accurate. However, in all literature on Catalan, only the characters for palato-alveolar affricates and fricatives are used, even when the same sources use $⟨⟩$ for other languages like Polish and Chinese.
 * Voiced obstruents undergo final-obstruent devoicing so that e.g. fred ('cold', m. s.) is pronounced with, while fredes ('cold', f. pl.) is pronounced with.

Stops
Voiced stops become lenited to approximants in syllable onsets, after continuants:. Exceptions include after lateral consonants and  after, e.g. ull de bou  ('oeil-de-boeuf'), bolígraf boníssim  ('excellent ballpoint'). In the coda position, these sounds are always realized as stops, except in some dialects of Valencian, where they are lenited.

In most dialects, and  may be geminated in certain environments (e.g. poble  'village', regla  'rule'), apart from Valencian where they are lenited.

In Majorcan varieties, and  become  and  word-finally and before front vowels, in some of these dialects, this has extended to all environments except before liquids and back vowels; e.g. sang  ('blood').

Affricates
The phonemic status of affricates is dubious; after other consonants, affricates are in free variation with fricatives, e.g. clenxa ~  ('hair parting') and may be analyzed as either single phonemes or clusters of a stop and a fricative.
 * Alveolar affricates, and, occur the least of all affricates.
 * only occurs intervocalically: metzines ('toxic substances').
 * Instances of arise mostly from compounding; the few lexical instances arise from historical compounding. For instance, potser  ('maybe') comes from pot ('may') + ser ('be' inf). As such,  does not occur word-initially; other than some rare words of foreign origin (e.g. tsar 'tsar', tsuga 'tsuga' ), but it may occur word-finally and quite often in cases of heteromorphemic (i.e. across a morpheme boundary) plural endings: tots  ('everybody').
 * The distribution of alveolo-palatal affricates, and, depends on dialect:
 * In Standard Eastern Catalan, word-initial is found only in a few words of foreign origin (e.g. txec 'Czech', Txaikovski 'Tchaikovsky') while being found freely intervocalically (e.g. fletxa 'arrow') and word-finally: despatx  ('office').
 * Standard Eastern Catalan also only allows in intervocalic position (e.g. metge 'medic', adjunt 'enclosed'). Phonemic analyses show word-final occurrences of  (e.g. raig esbiaixat  'skew ray'), but final devoicing eliminates this from the surface: raig  ('ray').
 * In various other dialects (as well as in emphatic speech), occurs word-initially and after another consonant to the exclusion of . These instances of word-initial  seem to correspond to  in other dialects, including the standard (on which the orthography is based): xinxa ('bedbug'), pronounced  in the standard, is  in these varieties.
 * Similarly, in most of Valencian and southern Catalonia, most occurrences of correspond to the voiced fricative  in Standard Eastern Catalan: gel  ('ice').

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 (e.g. metge 'medic').

Fricatives
occurs in Balearic, as well as in Alguerese, standard Valencian and some areas in southern Catalonia. Everywhere else, it has merged with. In Majorcan, and  are in complementary distribution, with  occurring before vowels (e.g. blava  'blue' f. vs. blau  'blue' m.). In other varieties that have both sounds, they are in contrast before vowels, with neutralization in favor of before consonants.

In some Valencian dialects, and  are auditorily similar such that neutralization may occur in the future. That is the case of Northern Valencian where is depalatalized to  or  as in caixa ('box'). Central Valencian words like mig ('half') and lleig ('ugly') have been transcribed with rather than the expected, and Southern Valencian  "has been reported to undergo depalatalization without merging with ". as in passets ('small steps') versus passeig ('promenade')

In Aragon and Central Valencian (the so called apitxat), voiced fricatives and affricates are missing (i.e. has merged with,  has merged with , with only voiceless realizations occurring) and  has merged with the  set.

Sonorants
While "dark (velarized) l",, may be a positional allophone of in most dialects (such as in the syllable coda; e.g. sòl  'ground'),  is dark irrespective of position in Eastern dialects like Majorcan and standard Eastern Catalan (e.g. tela ).

The distribution of the two rhotics and  closely parallels that of Spanish. Between vowels, the two contrast (e.g. mirra 'myrrh' vs. mira  'look'), but they are otherwise in complementary distribution: in the onset,  appears unless preceded by a consonant; different dialects vary in regards to rhotics in the coda with Western Catalan generally featuring  and Central Catalan dialects like those of Barcelona or Girona featuring a weakly trilled  unless it precedes a vowel-initial word in the same prosodic unit, in which case  appears.

In careful speech,, , and may be geminated (e.g. innecessari  'unnecessary'; emmagatzemar  'to store'; il·lusió  'illusion'). A geminated may also occur (e.g. ratlla  'line'). analyzes intervocalic as the result of gemination of a single rhotic phoneme: sorra  'sand' (this is similar to the common analysis of Spanish and Portuguese rhotics).

Vowels
Phonetic notes:
 * The vowel is further back and open than the Castilian counterpart in North-Western and Central Catalan, slightly fronted and closed in Valencian and Ribagorçan, and further fronted and closed  in Majorcan.
 * The mid-open vowels and  are lower in Majorcan, Minorcan and Valencian, that is, in these dialects the phonetic realization of  approaches, while  is as low as.
 * In Alguerese, Northern Catalan and some places bordering the Spanish-speaking areas, mid-open and close-mid vowels may merge into mid vowels; and.
 * Northern Catalan may add two loan rounded vowels, and, from French and Occitan (e.g. but  'aim', fulles  'leaves').
 * In the Barcelona metropolitan area unstressed schwa is lowered to a near-open central vowel, sounding closer to but in RP or Californian English.
 * Phonetic nasalization occurs for vowels occurring between nasal consonants or when preceding a syllable-final nasal; e.g. diumenge ('Sunday').

Stressed vowels


Most varieties of Catalan contrast seven stressed vowel phonemes. However, some Balearic dialects have an additional stressed vowel phoneme ; e.g. sec ('dry'). The stressed schwa of these dialects corresponds to in Central Catalan and  in Western Catalan varieties (that is, Central and Western Catalan dialects differ in their incidence of  and, with  appearing more frequently in Western Catalan; e.g. Central Catalan sec  vs. Western Catalan sec  'dry, I sit').

Contrasting series of the main Catalan dialects:

Unstressed vowels
In Eastern Catalan, vowels in unstressed position reduce to three :, , ; , , ; remains unchanged. However there are some dialectal differences: Alguerese merges, , and with ; and in most areas of Majorca,  can appear in unstressed position (that is,  and  are usually reduced to ).

In Western Catalan, vowels in unstressed position reduce to five:, ; , ; remain unchanged. However, in some Western dialects reduced vowels tend to merge into different realizations in some cases:
 * Unstressed may merge with  before a nasal or sibilant consonant (e.g. enclusa  'anvil', eixam  'swarm'), in some environments before any consonant (e.g. terròs  'earthy'), and in monosyllabic clitics. Likewise, unstressed  may merge into  when in contact with palatal consonants (e.g. senyor  'lord').


 * Unstressed may merge with  before a bilabial consonant (e.g. cobert  'covered'), before a stressed syllable with a high vowel (e.g. conill  'rabbit'), in contact with palatal consonants (e.g. Josep  'Joseph'), and in monosyllabic clitics.

Diphthongs and triphthongs
There are also a number of phonetic diphthongs and triphthongs, all of which begin and/or end in or.

In standard Eastern Catalan, rising diphthongs (that is, those starting with or ) are only possible in the following contexts:
 * in word-initial position, e.g. iogurt.
 * Both occur between vowels as in feia and veiem.
 * In the sequences or  and vowel, e.g. guant, quota, qüestió, pingüí (these exceptional cases even lead some scholars to hypothesize the existence of rare labiovelar phonemes  and ).

Processes
There are certain instances of compensatory diphthongization in Majorcan so that troncs ('logs') (in addition to deleting the palatal stop) develops a compensating palatal glide and surfaces as  (and contrasts with the unpluralized ). 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 ('year') vs. ('years').

The dialectal distribution of compensatory diphthongization is almost entirely dependent on the dorsal stop and the extent of consonant assimilation (whether or not it is 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 →  ('medic'). In Barcelona, voiced stops may be fortified (geminated and devoiced); e.g. poble 'village').

Assimilations
Catalan denti-alveolar stops can fully assimilate to the following consonant, producing gemination; this is particularly evident before nasal and lateral consonants: e.g. cotna ('rind'), motlle/motle ('spring'), and setmana ('week'). Learned words can alternate between featuring and not featuring such assimilation (e.g. atles 'atlas', administrar  'to administer').

Central Valencian features simple elision in many of these cases (e.g cotna, setmana ) though learned words don't exhibit either assimilation or elision: atles and administrar.

Stress
Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word (e.g.  brú ixola 'compass',  càs tig  'punishment', pa llús   'fool').

Compound words and adverbs formed with may have more than one stressed syllable (e.g.  bo na ment   'willingly';  pa ra llamps   'lightning conductor') but every lexical word has just one stressed syllable.

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

Word-medial codas are restricted to one consonant + (extra ). In the coda position, voice contrasts among obstruents are neutralized. Although there are exceptions (such as futur 'future'), syllable-final rhotics are often lost before a word boundary or before the plural morpheme of most words: color  ('color') vs. coloraina  ('bright color').

In Central Eastern 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.

When the suffix -erol is added to camp  it makes, indicating that the underlying representation is || (with subsequent cluster simplification), however when the copula  is added it makes. The resulting generalization is that this underlying will only surface in a morphologically complex word. Despite this, word-final codas are not usually simplified in most of Balearic and Valencian (e.g. camp ).

Word-initial clusters from Graeco-Latin learned words tend to drop the first phoneme: pneumàtic ('pneumatic'), pseudònim  ('pseudonym'), pterodàctil  ('pterodactylus'), gnom  ('gnome').

Word-final obstruents are devoiced, however they assimilate voicing of the following consonant; e.g. cuc de seda  ('silkworm'). In regular and fast speech, stops often assimilate the place of articulation of the following consonant producing gemination: tot bé ('all good').

Word-final fricatives (except ) are voiced before a following vowel; e.g. bus enorme ('huge bus').

In Majorcan and Minorcan Catalan, undergoes total assimilation to a following consonant (just as stops do): buf gros  ('large puff').

Dialectal variation
[[File:Catalandialects.png|thumb|right|300px|Dialectal Map of Catalan from

Eastern dialects: {{legend|#B67000|North Catalan}} {{legend|#C24851|Central Catalan}} {{legend|#A55DD3|Balearic and Alguerese}} Western dialects: {{legend|#6870FF|North-western}} {{legend|#3AC636|Valencian}}]] 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 and eastern dialects; the latter of which only allow, , and to appear in unstressed syllables and include Northern Catalan, Central Catalan, Balearic, and Alguerese. Western dialects, which allow any vowel in unstressed syllables, include Valencian and North-Western Catalan.

Regarding consonants, betacism and fricative–affricate alternations are the most prominent differences between dialects.

Other dialectal features are:
 * Vowel harmony with and  in Southern Valencian; this process is progressive (i.e. preceding vowels affect those pronounced afterwards) over the last unstressed vowel of a word; e.g. hora  → .  However, there are cases where regressive metaphony occurs over pretonic vowels; e.g. tovallola  →  ('towel'), afecta  →  ('affects').
 * In Southern Valencian subvarieties, especially in Alicante Valencian, the diphthong (phonetically  in Valencian) has become : bous  ('bulls').
 * In regular speech in both, Eastern and Western Catalan dialects, word-initial unstressed – or – may be diphthongized to  (Eastern Catalan) or  (Western Catalan): ofegar  ('to drown, suffocate').
 * In Aragonese Catalan (including Ribagorçan), is palatalized to  in consonant clusters; e.g. plou  'it rains'.
 * In Alguerese and Ribagorçan word-final and  are depalatized to  and, respectively; e.g. gall  ('rooster'), any  ('year').
 * Varying degrees of L-velarization among dialects: is dark irrespective of position in Balearic and Central Catalan and might tend to vocalization in some cases. In Western varieties like Valencian, this dark l contrasts with a clear l in intervocalic and word-initial position; while in other dialects, like Alguerese or Northern Catalan,  is never velarized in any instance.
 * Iodització (also known as iesme històric "historic yeísmo") in regular speech in most of Majorcan, Northern Catalan and in the historic comarca of Vallès (Barcelona): merges with  in some Latin derived words with intervocalic L-palatalization (intervocalic  + yod (--, --), --, --, and --); e.g. palla  ('straw'). An exception to this rule is initial L-palatalization; e.g. lluna  ('moon').
 * The dorso-palatal may occur in complementary distribution with, only in Majorcan varieties that have dorso-palatals rather than the velars found in most dialects: guerra  ('war') vs. sa guerra  ('the war').
 * In northern and transitional Valencian, word-initial and postconsonantal (Eastern Catalan  and ) alternates with  intervocalically; e.g. joc  'game', but pitjor  'worse', boja  'crazy' (standard Valencian, ; ; standard Catalan ,  and ).
 * In northern Valencia and southern Catalonia has merged with realizations of  after a high front vocoid; e.g. terrissa  ('pottery'), insistisc  ('I insist') vs. pixar  ('to pee'), deixar  ('to leave'). In these varieties  is not found after other vocoids, and merges with  after consonants; e.g. punxa  ('thorn').
 * Intervocalic dropping (particularly participles) in regular speech in Valencian, with compensatory lengthening of vowel ; e.g. vesprada  ('evening').
 * In northern Catalonia and in the town of Sóller (Majorca), a uvular trill or approximant  can be heard instead of an alveolar trill; e.g. córrer  ('to run').