This section shows the phonology of the Orsmaal-Gussenhoven dialect, which is spoken in the
Linter municipality. The dialect of Melkwezer has a similar phonology, except for the fact that the diphthong is realized with a mid onset: . • is restricted to word-initial position, and occurs only in loanwords from French. It tends to either devoice to or be affricated to . • The exact place of articulation of varies: •
Velar before and after back vowels and, in the case of , also when it is preceded by a back vowel in an intervocalic position between stressed and unstressed syllable. •
Palatal before and after front vowels and, in the case of , also after . • may be
dropped by some speakers. • has a few possible realizations, none of which are
uvular. This stands in contrast to most varieties of Limburgish, where is a
uvular trill or
fricative. • Apical trill or an apical fricative before a stressed vowel in word-initial syllables. • Intervocalically and in the onset after a consonant, it may be a tap . • Word-final is highly variable; the most frequent variants are an apical fricative trill , an apical fricative and an apical non-sibilant affricate . The last two variants tend to be voiceless () in pre-pausal position. • The sequence can be vocalized to or . s of the Orsmaal-Gussenhoven dialect, from • Peters gives six more diphthongs, which are . He gives no evidence for their phonemic status. As Brabantian dialects are known for both diphthongizing and especially monophthongizing , the distinction between the closing diphthongs and the monophthongs is ignored elsewhere in the article, with being used as cover symbols for both. • The open central vowels are phonologically back in that they trigger the velar allophones of and . • Among the long rounded vowels, before within the same syllable vary between monophthongs and centering diphthongs , which often are disyllabic (with the first portion realized as a closing diphthong). At least in the case of and , the tongue movement may be so slight that they are sometimes better described as lip-diphthongs . In the same environment, can be disyllabic . For the sake of simplicity, those allophones are transcribed in phonetic transcription. • There are two additional short tense vowels and , which are tenser (higher and perhaps also more rounded) than the native short (with the latter being phonetically). They appear only in a few French loanwords. Their status as phonemes separate from the long tense and is unclear; Peters treats them as marginal phonemes. • occurs only before alveolar consonants. Phonetically, it varies between . • Stressed short vowels cannot occur in open syllables. Exceptions to this rule are high-frequency words like
wa 'what' and loanwords from French. ==References==