Indo-European languages Slavic Older was spirantized and later debuccalized in languages such as
Belarusian, the
Czech–Slovak languages,
Ukrainian, and
Upper Sorbian, e.g. Serbian
bog, Russian
box, Czech
bůh, Ukrainian
bih.
English Scots and Scottish English In some varieties of
Scots and
Scottish English, particularly on the West Coast, a non word-final
th shifted to , a process called
th-debuccalization. For example, is realized as .
Scouse Pre-pausally, may be debuccalized to [h]:
it,
lot,
that,
what are then pronounced .
Proto-Greek In
Proto-Greek, shifted to initially and between
sonorants (
vowels,
liquids, and
nasals). •
Proto-Indo-European → Proto-Greek →
Ancient Greek () "seven" (vs.
Latin ) Intervocalic had been lost by the time of
Ancient Greek, and vowels in
hiatus were
contracted in the
Attic dialect. • post-PIE
*ǵénesos → Proto-Greek →
Ionic () :
Attic () "of a race" Before a liquid or nasal, an was assimilated to the preceding vowel in Attic-Ionic and
Doric and to the following nasal in
Aeolic. The process is also described as the loss of and the subsequent lengthening of a vowel or consonant, which kept the syllable the same
length (
compensatory lengthening). • PIE → Proto-Greek → Attic-Ionic () : Aeolic () "I am"
Indo-Aryan Sanskrit In
Sanskrit, becomes (written in transliteration) before a
pause: e.g. ('desire'), ('again') become , . Additionally, the Proto-Indo-European aspirated voiced palato-velar
*ǵʰ became through successive affrication, assibilation and debuccalization: e.g. "arm" becomes Sanskrit . There are rare instances where bh, dh debuccalized but was preserved in Prakrits, e.g. PIE , Sanskrit , Pali ; PIE , Sanskrit , Gawri , Khowar .
Bengali In many
Eastern Bengali dialects, the voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant can become debuccalized to glottal or , e.g. "wife's brother" is , and "sea" is . The tenuis and aspirated forms of the labial stop and velar stop can get lenited to and respectively, but also be further debuccalized to or , e.g. "mad" is and "beggar, faqir" is . In some cases, even the glottal fricative is dropped, e.g. "(he / she / it) came" is .
Others The Gujarati colloquial register has or both and debuccalized to voiceless . For educated speakers speaking this register, this replacement does not extend to borrowings from Sanskrit.
West Iberian Spanish A number of
Spanish dialects debuccalize to or to at the
end of a
syllable or intervocalically in certain instances. Some further undergo deletion and compensatory lengthening of nearby vowel or consonant.
Galician In many varieties of
Galician, as well as in
Galician-influenced Spanish, the phoneme may debuccalize () to in most or all instances; and are also possible realizations. There is also an inverse
hypercorrection process of older or less educated Galician speakers replacing the phoneme of Spanish with , which is called .
Portuguese Portuguese is much less affected by debuccalization, but it is especially notable in its
Brazilian variety. Throughout Brazil, the phoneme (historically an alveolar trill that moved to an uvular position) has a rather long inventory of allophones: . Only is uncommon. Few dialects, such as and , give preference to voiced allophones; elsewhere, they are common only as coda, before voiced consonants. In such dialects, especially among people speaking an educated variety of Portuguese, it is usual for the rhotic coda in the
syllable rhyme to be an alveolar tap, as in European Portuguese and many registers of Spanish, or to be realized as or . In the rest of the country, it is generally realized as , even by speakers who either do not normally use that allophone or delete it entirely, as is common in the vernacular. However, in some - and -influenced rural registers, is used but as an allophone of (rhotic consonants are most often deleted), a merger, instead of the much more common and less-stigmatized
merger characteristic of all Brazilian urban centers except for those bordering
Mercosur countries, where coda was preserved, and the entire
North and
Northeast regions. Its origin is the replacement of indigenous languages and by Portuguese, which created , and
r-colored vowel as allophones of both (now mostly ) and (now mostly ) phonemes in the coda since Native Brazilians could not easily pronounce them (
caipira dialect). The later Portuguese influence from other regions made those allophones become rarer in some areas, but the merger remained in a few isolated villages and towns. Finally, many registers, especially those of the poor and of the youth; most northern and northeastern dialects; and, to a much minor degree, all other Brazilian dialects, debuccalize but less often than in Spanish. However, a merger or even a merger occurs: "but even so" or "though, right, the same (f) one" ; light "lighter, more slim", or also "less caloric/fatty" ; "but from me, no" or "not more from me" . A coda rhotic in the Brazilian dialects in the
Centro-Sul area is hardly ever glottal, and the debuccalized is unlikely to be confused with it.
Romanian In the Moldavian dialect of
Romanian, is debuccalized to and so, for example, becomes . The same occurred in
Old Spanish and Old
Gascon and still occurs in
Sylheti.
Goidelic languages In
Scottish and
Irish Gaelic,
s and
t changed by
lenition to , spelled
sh and
th.
Faliscan Inscription in
Faliscan from the 4th century BC onward show the occasional debuccalization of to (e.g.
hileo : Latin
filius). Whether the shift is displayed in the inscriptions is highly irregular, with some forms even showing an ostensibly opposite shift of written
f in place of an expected
h (e.g.
fe : Latin
hic), possibly by means of hypercorrection.
Austronesian languages Malay In several peninsular
Malay dialects, final
-s is realized as .
Batak languages In the
Batak branch, all southern languages (but not the northern ones including
Karo) have debuccalized
*k into
h except when word-final or followed
*ŋ. Both
Angkola and
Mandailing have restored
k within the sequence
hVhV (Angkola
kehe, Mandailing
ke, but Toba
hehe) or following a consonant in Mandailing (
ala "scorpion" →
parkalahan). Mandailing, however has also further deleted
*h (
*kalak →
alak "person") except in the sequence
-aha- (
dahan "mushroom", not
*dan).
Polynesian languages Polynesian languages commonly reflect debuccalization not only
into a glottal stop but also into a glottal fricative . The exact distribution
depends on the language: Southern and western dialects of Malto have /ʔ/ instead of /q/ and /h/ instead of /ʁ/ and /ŋʁ/.
Slavey All coda consonants in
Slavey must be glottal. When a non-glottal consonant would otherwise be positioned in a syllable coda, it debuccalizes to : • → ('hat') • → ('scar') • → ('rope') ==Loanwords==