Afroasiatic languages Arabic Written
Arabic indicates gemination with a diacritic (Arabic diacritics|) shaped like a lowercase Greek
omega or a rounded Latin
w, called the shadda|: . 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. Phonological alternations can surface by concatenation (e.g., 'give him two!') or by complete assimilation (e.g. 'he will touch you'). 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').
Hebrew In
Biblical Hebrew, all consonants except
gutturals and (
Resh) can receive a dot called a
dagesh ḥazak, placed inside the letter: it means the letter has been functionally geminated/doubled (whether or not this was vocalized in speech). This happens following the morphological / grammatical
rules of gemination. In
Modern Hebrew: • in writing, the same rules of (functional) gemination apply, although the resultant
dagesh ḥazak dots are only visible in pointed texts where
diacritics are written: in texts for children or new immigrants to Israel, or in specialized texts like dictionaries and poetry. Like all Hebrew diacritics, they are still functionally present even when they are hidden in unpointed texts. As a result, they can still influence pronunciation. • in speech, vocal gemination itself (the articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time) is generally not pronounced. However, the rules of gemination, which determine when a
dagesh ḥazak is placed inside a letter which is functionally doubled, still influence pronunciation in one respect: if a
dagesh ḥazak (visible or not, whether the text is pointed or not) is present in
bet,
kaf, and
pe, it turns a fricative sound (
vet,
khaf, and
fe) into a plosive sound (
bet,
kaf, and
pe); in all other letters, it has no influence on the letter's pronunciation. Example: according to the
rules of the dagesh ḥazak, the
definite article "the" causes the next letter to be functionally geminated: in ("everything", literally "the all"), the is geminated (it has a
dagesh ḥazak dot inside it), and is thus pronounced . On the other hand, the preposition "in, with, by" does not cause the next letter to be geminated, so in "in all, by all", the is not geminated (no
dagesh ḥazak dot inside it), and is thus pronounced . This illustrates how the rules of gemination influence pronunciation in modern Hebrew. The difference between the geminated and the ungeminated would not be visible in a regular, unpointed text ( would appear in both cases), but the letters would still be pronounced differently.
Austronesian languages Austronesian languages in the
Philippines,
Micronesia, and
Sulawesi are known to have geminate consonants.
Kavalan The
Formosan language Kavalan makes use of gemination to mark intensity, as in 'bad' vs. 'very bad'. 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 Tuvaluan allows for word-initial geminates, such as 'overcooked'.
Indo-European languages English In
English phonology, 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:
wholly (cf.
holy) • m:
calm man or
roommate (in some dialects) or
prime minister • n:
evenness • p:
lamppost (compare
lamb post,
compost) • r:
interregnum or
fire road • s:
misspell or
this saddle • sh:
fish shop • t:
cat tail • 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 Note that whenever appears (in brackets), non-rhotic dialects of English don't have the gemination, but rather lengthen the preceding vowel. In some dialects gemination is also found for some (not all) words when the suffix
-ly follows a root ending in , as in
solely , but not in
usually . In some varieties of
Welsh English, 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 ( realised ), 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 by influence of the spelling. However, gemination is contrastive in a few cases. Some words, such as
netteté, and
verrerie, are generally pronounced with a silent e following the double consonant, resulting in a pronunciation that reflects the gemination. Statements such as ('she said') ~ ('she said it') ~ can commonly be distinguished by gemination. In a more sustained pronunciation, gemination distinguishes the conditional (and possibly the future tense) from the imperfect: 'would run' vs. 'ran' ; or the indicative from the subjunctive: 'we believe' vs. 'we believed' .
Greek In
Ancient Greek, consonant length was distinctive, e.g., 'I am of interest' vs. 'I am going to'. The distinction has been lost in the
standard and most other
varieties, 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.
Hindustani Gemination is common in both
Hindi and
Urdu. 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 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 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 for its extensive geminate consonants. In
Standard Italian, 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 'homeward' but not by definite article in '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 was also distinctive in Latin until about the fourth century, and was often reflected in the orthography with an
apex. Geminates inherited from Latin still exist in
Italian, 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, former Latin geminate consonants often evolved to new phonemes, including some instances of
nasal vowels in
Portuguese and Old
Galician as well as most cases of and in Spanish, but with the possible exception of [r] and [rː] in Spanish (
caro 'expensive',
carro 'car';
pero 'but, however',
perro 'dog') phonetic length of 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, 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 A specific feature of
Polish is the almost exclusive occurrence of true gemination. Doubled letters are pronounced with rearticulation as two separate sounds with short pause, this applies to both consonants and vowels. However, it is also possible to pronounce geminates as single sounds if this does not change the meaning. Geminates are typical 1.5-3 times longer than single tones. Rearticulated geminates they have the same length as single. Vowels before or after geminates do not differ in length from typical ones. 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), after
devoicing. 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, which is used to represent gemination in the
Shahmukhi script, is not necessarily written, retaining the tradition of the original
Arabic script and
Persian language, 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, the
shadda 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, 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 (a
Bantu language) 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, 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 ('foreign words') into Modern Japanese,
voiced consonants have become able to geminate as well: () means '(computer) bug', and () means 'bag'. Distinction between
voiceless gemination and
voiced 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').
Turkic languages Turkish In
Turkish gemination is indicated by two identical letters as in most languages that have phonemic gemination. • "mother" • "freedom" Loanwords originally ending with a phonemic geminated
consonant 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) = ('hands'). (contrasts with , 's/he eliminates') • ('to throw') + ("-ed", marks
past tense,
first person plural) = ('we threw [smth.]'). (contrasts with , 'waste')
Dravidian languages Malayalam In
Malayalam, compounding is phonologically conditioned called as
sandhi and gemination occurs at word boundaries. Gemination sandhi is called
dvitva sandhi or 'doubling sandhi'. Consider following example: • + ( + ) – () Gemination also occurs in a single morpheme like () which has a different meaning from ().
Tamil In Tamil, "otru" can occur when two words combine in a certain meaning. This otru is generally one of , ச் , த் and ப் , and occurs when one of these four consonants is the first letter of the second word. For example: • + ( + ) – () • + ( + ) – () • + ( + ) – () • + ( + ) – () Gemination also occurs in nouns that end in and when they are part of a grammatical case. For example: • + ( + ) => () (meaning: house tax) • + ( + ) => () (meaning: muddy field) Gemination also occurs in a single morpheme like () which has a different meaning from (). More examples where words without and with gemination consonants have different meanings: • () - () • () - () • () - ()
Uralic languages Sámi languages Many
Sámi languages have gemination as a phonetic feature. The
Proto-Sami language had as many as four different lengths, although there is only one living language where this is attested: certains dialect of
Ume Sámi. Most varieties have merged them to two or three contrastive degrees of length.
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 caused by now-deleted suffixes, for example half-long 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==