Dutch phonology

The following table shows the consonant phonemes of Dutch: Apart from , all alveolar consonants are laminal and may be realised as denti-alveolar in Belgium. Obstruents • The glottal stop is not a phoneme because it occurs only optionally in a few specific predictable environments: • It always separates and other vowels. • It often occurs at the beginning of vowel-initial words after a pause. • Moreso when separate vowel articulations are present within words (e.g. IQ-onderzoek, milieu-imago, toe-eigenen, coöperatie, and beaam). And even more common in the case of compounds where both elements have the same vowel at the syllable-boundary (e.g. hippie-ideaal, mee-eten, glijijzer, bui-uitdoving, kilo-ohm, trouwauto). • Stops: • Voiceless: Unlike in English and German, Dutch's are unaspirated word initially: both English tip and German are , but Dutch is with an unaspirated . • Voiced: • and are fully voiced. • is not a native phoneme of Dutch and occurs only in loanwords like goal ('goal') but is analyzed as a phoneme because minimal pairs exist: goal and kool ('cabbage'). Additionally, in native words, occurs as an allophone of when it undergoes regressive voicing assimilation like in zakdoek . • /Pj/: • In onsets, the sequence is commonly realised as a tenuis alveolo-palatal affricate , or intervocalically as a stop or fricative , barring some loanwords and names. • In onsets, the sequence is commonly realised as a tenuis alveolo-palatal affricate , or intervocalically as a stop or fricative , barring some loanwords and names. • The sequence is often realised as a voiceless post-palatal affricate . • Fricatives: • Voicing: • In the Netherlands, can devoice and merge with . According to , hardly any speakers of Northern Standard Dutch consistently contrast with . • In low-prestige varieties of Netherlandic Dutch (such as the Amsterdam accent) can also devoice and merge with . • Speakers who devoice and may also hypercorrectively voice and : concert "concert" may thus be compared to the more usual . • Some speakers pronounce as a voiceless . • Coronal: • In the Netherlands, and may have only mid-to-low pitched friction, and for many Netherlandic speakers, they are retracted. In Belgium, they are more similar to English . • The sequences and are often assimilated to palatalised , alveolo-palatal , postalveolar or similar realisations. • are not native phonemes of Dutch and usually occur only in borrowed words like show and bagage "baggage". Depending on the speaker and the position in the word, they may or may not be distinct from the assimilated realisations of the clusters . If they are not distinct, they have the same range of realisations as noted above. • Dorsal • In the north, is often realised the same as ; the quality of that merged sound has been variously described as a voiceless post-velar or uvular fricative. Popularly, this is called harde g . Although they share a common phone, the two phenemes aren't said to have merged as the past tense suffix, whose voicing status is determined by the previous consonant's, still bases itself on the underlying phonemes, e.g. + -e > loogde but + -e > lachte . • In the south, the distinction between and is generally preserved as velar or post-palatal . Some southern speakers may alternate between the velar and post-palatal articulation, depending on the backness of the preceding or succeeding vowel. Often referred to as zachte g . • In Zeeland and West Flanders, there is also a third variant, called zwakke harde g , in which is realised as and is realised as . They are h-dropping areas, so does not merge with glottal variants of and . • Some dialects, particularly those from the southwest, exhibit h-dropping. Sonorants • Nasals assimilate in the following manner. This also occurs across word-boundaries in allegro speech and may not happen word internally when over enunciating: • and to a following labial obstruent: • before bilabials they merge into . • before labio-dentals they merge into . • to a following dorsal consonants: • before velars , it merges with . • The realisation of in turn depends on how a following velar fricative is realised. For example, it is uvular for speakers who realise as uvulars. • before palatals, , -assimilated and loan introduced-, it is realised as . • varies mostly according to regional dialect: • In central and northern Netherlands, it is a labiodental approximant or even a voiced labiodental fricative . • Speakers in southern Netherlands and Belgium (also Hasselt and Maastricht dialects) use a bilabial approximant . It is like but without velarisation. • may join the allophony. • In Suriname and among immigrant populations, is common. • The exact pronunciation of varies regionally: • In the North, is 'clear' before vowels and 'dark' before consonants and pauses. Intervocalic tends to be clear except after the open back vowels . However, some speakers use the dark variant in all intervocalic contexts. • Some accents, such as in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, have dark in all positions. Conversely, some accents in the eastern regions, along the German border (for example around Nijmegen), as well as some speakers of Standard Belgian, have clear in all contexts. • The quality of dark varies: • In the North, it is pharyngealised , e.g. . • In a final position, many of such speakers produce a strongly pharyngealised vocoid with no alveolar contact () instead, . • In Belgium, it is either velarised , e.g. ; or post-palatalised , e.g. . • Palatal may appear before . • varies considerably from dialect to dialect and even between speakers in the same dialect area: • Coronal realisations are the historical pronunciation of the phoneme, spearheaded by the alveolar trill and the alveolar tap as common allophone. • Fricative realisation can also nowadays be heard: [~], authors do not say where exactly it is used; word finally and before /s/, is not uncommon, e.g. • Uvular continuants are rising in popularity, the uvular trill serving as flagship. It is found particularly in the central and southern dialect areas and increasingly in the Randstad. e.g. . • The coastal dialects of South Holland produce a voiced uvular fricative . • In the center of the country, more specifically in Amsterdam and especially Nijmegen, as well as in Flanders, the voiced uvular approximant is a minority. • Syllable-finally, they may be vocalised to , much as in German, which is more common in the (south)eastern areas (Limburg, southeast Brabantian, Overijssel), e.g. . • The velar bunched approximant (the Gooise R, which sounds similar to the retroflex approximant) is found at the end of a syllable in the pronunciation of some speakers in the Netherlands, especially those from the Randstad, but not in Belgium. Its use has been increasing in recent years. e.g. • Other variants include in North Brabant and North Holland. An epenthetic may be inserted between and word-final . Thus melk "milk" may be pronounced . That may extend to compounds: melkboer "milkman". Although this pronunciation is mistakenly thought of as non-standard, it is found in all types of Dutch, including the standard varieties. There is also another type of -insertion that occurs word-medially (e.g. helpen "to help"), which is considered non-standard. In many areas, the final 'n' of the ending -en (originally , with a variety of meanings) is pronounced only if a word is being individually stressed, which makes -en words homophonous with otherwise-identical forms ending in -e alone. The -n is dropped both word-finally and, in compound words, word-internally. This pronunciation can be morphologically sensitive and serve to distinguish words since the -n is dropped only when it is part of the distinct ending -en, not when it is in a word that has an indivisible stem that happens to end in -en. Thus, the teken of ik teken ('I draw') always retains its -n because it is part of an indivisible stem, but teken ('ticks') drops it since it is part of a plural ending. Such pairs (teken = 'draw'; teken = 'ticks'), despite being written identically, are therefore not homophones in dialects that drop -n. Final -n is retained in the North East (Low Saxon) and the South West (East and West Flemish), where it is the schwa that disappears instead. This creates a syllabic or (after velars) syllabic sounds: laten ; maken . Some Low Saxon dialects that have uvular pronunciations of and (or one of them) also have a syllabic uvular nasal, as in lagen and/or lachen Final devoicing and assimilation Dutch devoices all obstruents at the ends of words, which is partly reflected in the spelling. The voiced "z" in plural becomes ('house') in singular. Also, becomes ('dove'). The other cases are always written with the voiced consonant, but a devoiced one is actually pronounced: the "d" in plural is retained in singular spelling ('beard'), but the pronunciation of the latter is , and plural has singular ('rib'), pronounced . Because of assimilation, the initial of the next word is often also devoiced: het vee ('the cattle') is . The opposite may be true for other consonants: ik ben ('I am') . Example words for consonants ==Vowels==

Dutch has an extensive vowel inventory consisting of thirteen plain vowels and at least three diphthongs. Vowels can be grouped as front unrounded, front rounded, central and back. They are also traditionally distinguished by length or tenseness. The vowels are included in one of the diphthong charts below because Northern Standard Dutch realises them as diphthongs, but they behave phonologically like the other long monophthongs. Monophthongs of Northern Standard Dutch, from • Dutch vowels can be classified as lax and tense, checked and free or short and long. Phonetically however, the close vowels are as short as the phonological lax/short vowels unless they occur before . • Phonologically, can be classified as either close or close-mid. Carlos Gussenhoven classifies them as the former, whereas Geert Booij says that they are the latter and classifies and the non-native mid vowels as open-mid. • has been traditionally transcribed with , but modern sources tend to use or instead. Beverley Collins and Inger Mees write this vowel with . • The phonemic status of is not clear. Phonetically, a vowel of the type appears before nasals as an allophone of , e.g. in jong ('young'). This vowel can also be found in certain other words, such as op ('on'), which can form a near-minimal pair with mop ('joke'). This, however, is subject to both individual and geographical variation, compare song ~ gong ~ dong from the same speaker. • Many speakers feel that and belong to the same phoneme, with being its unstressed variant. This is reflected in spelling errors produced by Dutch children, for example for binnen ('inside'). Adding to this, the two vowels have different phonological distribution; for example, can occur word-finally, while (along with other lax vowels) cannot. In addition, the word-final allophone of is a close-mid front vowel with some rounding , a sound that is similar to . • The native tense vowels are long in stressed syllables and short elsewhere. The non-native oral vowels appear only in stressed syllables and thus are always long. • The native as well as the non-native nasal are sometimes transcribed without the length marks, as . • The non-native occur only in stressed syllables. In unstressed syllables, they are replaced by the closest native vowel. For instance, verbs corresponding to the nouns analyse ('analysis'), centrifuge ('spinner'), and zone ('zone') are analyseren ('to analyze'), centrifugeren ('to spin-dry'), and zoneren ('to divide into zones'). • is extremely rare, and the only words of any frequency in which it occurs are oeuvre , manoeuvre and freule. In the more common words, tends to be replaced with the native , whereas can be replaced by either or (Belgians typically select the latter). • The non-native nasal vowels occur only in loanwords from French. are often nativised as , or , depending on the place of articulation of the following consonant. For instance, restaurant ('restaurant') and pardon ('excuse me') are often nativised as and , respectively. is extremely rare, just like its oral counterpart, and the only word of any frequency in which it occurs is parfum ('perfume'), often nativised as or . • The non-native is listed only by some sources. It occurs in words such as cast ('cast'). The following sections describe the phonetic quality of Dutch monophthongs in detail. Close vowels • is near the canonical value of the IPA symbol . The Standard Belgian realisation has also been described as close-mid . In regional Standard Dutch, the realisation may be different: for example, in Antwerp it is closer, more like , whereas in places like Dordrecht, Nijmegen, West and East Flanders the vowel is typically more open than the Standard Dutch counterpart, more like . Affected speakers of Northern Standard Dutch may also use this vowel. • are close front , close to cardinal . • The majority of sources consider to be close-mid central , yet Beverley Collins and Inger Mees consider it to be close-mid front . The study conducted by Vincent van Heuven and Roos Genet has shown that native speakers consider the canonical IPA value of the symbol to be the most similar one to the Dutch sound, much more than the canonical values of and (the sound represented by was not a part of the study). , and . • The starting points of tend to be closer () in Belgian Standard Dutch than in Northern Standard Dutch (). In addition, the Belgian Standard Dutch realisation of tends to be fully rounded, unlike the typical Northern Standard Dutch realisation. However, Jo Verhoeven reports rather open starting points of the Belgian Standard Dutch variants of () and so the main difference between Belgian and Northern Standard Dutch in this respect may be only in the rounding of the first element of , but the fully rounded variant of is also used by some Netherlandic speakers, particularly of the older generation. It is also used in most of Belgium, in line with the Belgian Standard Dutch realisation. • In conservative Northern Standard Dutch, the starting points of are open-mid and rounded in the case of the last two vowels: . • The backness of the starting point of the Belgian Standard Dutch realisation of has been variously described as front and centralised front . • In Polder Dutch, which is spoken in some areas of the Netherlands (especially the Randstad and its surroundings), the starting points of are further lowered to . That is typically accompanied by the lowering of the starting points of to . Such realisations have existed in Hollandic dialects since the 16th century and are now are becoming standard in the Netherlands. They are an example of a chain shift that is similar to the Great Vowel Shift in English. According to Jan Stroop, the fully lowered variant of is the same as the phonetic diphthong , making bij 'at' and baai 'bay' perfect homophones. • The rounding of the starting point of the Northern Standard Dutch realisation of has been variously described as slight and non-existent . The unrounded variant has also been reported to occur in many other accents such as in Leiden and Rotterdam and in some Belgian speakers. • Phonetically, the endpoints of the native diphthongs are lower and more central than cardinal and more like or even (however, Jo Verhoven reports a rather close () endpoints of the Belgian Standard Dutch variant of and so that might be somewhat variable). In Belgian Standard Dutch, the endpoints are shorter than in Northern Standard Dutch, but in both varieties, the glide is an essential part of the articulation. Furthermore, Northern Standard Dutch has no appreciable difference between the endpoints of and the phonetic diphthongs , with both sets ending in vowels near . • In some regional varieties of Standard Dutch (Southern, regional Belgian), the endpoints of are even lower than in Standard Dutch: . In the traditional dialect of The Hague, they are pure monophthongs . Broad Amsterdam may also monophthongise but to . It typically does not merge with , which has a rather back () realisation in Amsterdam. While occur only in Northern Standard Dutch and regional Netherlands Standard Dutch, all varieties of Standard Dutch have phonetic diphthongs . Phonemically, they are considered to be sequences of by Geert Booij and as monosyllabic sequences by Beverley Collins and Inger Mees (they do not comment on and ). This article adopts the former analysis. The endpoints of these "long" diphthongs tend to be slightly more central () than cardinal . They tend to be higher than the endpoints of the phonemic diphthongs . In Northern Standard Dutch, the second elements of may be labiodental , which is especially common in intervocalic positions. In Northern Standard Dutch and regional Netherlands Standard Dutch, the close-mid elements of may be subject to the same kind of diphthongisation as and so they may be actually triphthongs with two closing elements ( can instead be , a closing diphthong followed by ). In Rotterdam, can be phonetically , with a central starting point. is realised with more prominence on the first element, according to Booij, and with equal prominence on both elements, according to Collins and Mees. Other diphthongs have more prominence on the first element. Sample words for vowels and diphthongs ==Stress==

Most native Germanic words, which are the bulk of the core vocabulary, are stressed on the root syllable, which is usually the first syllable of the word. Germanic words may also be stressed on the second or a later syllable if certain unstressed prefixes are added, particularly for verbs. Non-root stress is common in loanwords, which are generally borrowed with the stress placement unchanged. Secondary stress may also be present in polysyllabic words. Certain prefixes and suffixes receive secondary stress: , . The stressed syllable of a word receives secondary stress within a compound word: , . The vast majority of compound nouns are stressed on the first element: , . The word generally takes secondary stress in compounds: , . Some compounds formed from two words are stressed on the second element: , . In some cases, the secondary stress in a compound shifts to preserve a trochaic pattern: , but . Compounds formed from two compound words tend to follow the same rules, but for compound words formed of more than two words, the stress is irregular. {{Listen While stress is phonemic, minimal pairs are rare, and marking the stress in written Dutch is always optional though it is sometimes recommended to distinguish homographs that differ only in stress. It is common practice to distinguish een (indefinite article) from één (the cardinal number one), but the distinction is not so much about stress as it is about the pronunciation of the vowel ( versus ) since the former is always unstressed, the latter may or may not be stressed. Stress also distinguishes some verbs since stress placement on prefixes also carries a grammatical distinction, such as in vóórkomen ('to occur') and voorkómen ('to prevent'). In vóórkomen and other verbs with a stressed prefix, the prefix is separable and separates as kom voor in the first-person singular present, with the past participle vóórgekomen. On the other hand, verbs with an unstressed prefix are not separable: voorkómen becomes voorkóm in the first-person singular present and voorkómen in the past participle, without the past participle prefix ge-. Dutch, like other Germanic languages, has a strong stress accent and uses stress timing because of its relatively complex syllable structure. It has a preference for trochaic rhythm, with relatively stronger and weaker stress alternating between syllables in such a way that syllables with stronger stress are produced at a more or less constant pace. Generally, alternate syllables before and after the primary receive relative stress as far as secondary stress placements allow: Wá.gə.nì.ngən. Relative stress preferably does not fall on and so syllables containing it may disrupt the trochaic rhythm. To restore the pattern, vowels are often syncopated in speech: kín.də.rən > , há.ri.ngən > , vər.gə.líj.king > . In words for which the secondary stress is imposed lexically onto the syllable immediately following the stressed syllable, a short pause is often inserted after the stressed syllable to maintain the rhythm, which ensures that the stressed syllable has more or less an equal length to the trochaic unit after it: bóm..mèl.ding, wéér..lò.zə. Historically, the Dutch stress accent has reduced most vowels in unstressed syllables to , as in most other Germanic languages. The process is still somewhat productive, and it is common to reduce vowels to in syllables that carry neither primary nor secondary stress, particularly in syllables that are relatively weakly stressed because of the trochaic rhythm. Weakly stressed long vowels may also be shortened without any significant reduction in vowel quality. For example, politie (phonemically ) may be pronounced , or even . ==Phonotactics==

The syllable structure of Dutch is (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C). Like for English, many words, such as straat (street), begin with three consonants. Words that end in four consonants are mostly superlative adjectives. Onset Notes on individual consonants: • is the only phoneme that can occur at the beginning of a sequence of three consonants: , , , , , . It is the only consonant that can occur before : . It cannot occur immediately before with the exception of some toponyms, such as Sri Lanka /sri ˈlɑŋka/, and loanwords, such as Sranantongo /sranɑn'tɔŋɣo/. It does, however, also occur phonetically in words of Dutch origin for speakers who drop in the sequence (very common in ). • The only possible consonant cluster with is : . • is infrequent as the first element, mostly occurring in roots coming from Greek: , , . It is very common in the sequence . • , and do not occur in clusters. • cannot appear in onsets except as an ambisyllabic word-internal consonant. A sequence of CCC always begins with . The CC-structure may be realised by almost all stops and non-sibilant, non-glottal fricatives followed by the sonorants or , but and are impossible: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Voiced obstruents except for may not appear in other clusters. Voiceless obstruents can occur in stop-fricative and fricative-stop clusters. Sequences of a voiceless obstruent or and are also possible since for , only occurs: • Stop-fricative clusters primarily occur in loanwords: , , , . • , , and the rare are typical of words derived from Greek. • An obstruent followed by appears in many native words: , , more rarely (also in words derived from Greek: gnostiek), . • pneumatisch appears only in words derived from Greek. Nasals rarely begin clusters. Coda • Voiced consonants appear only in loanwords: jazz. • appears alone and is preceded by or and/or followed by , , . • does not occur before labials and dorsals, does not occur before labials and does not occur before dorsals. does not follow long vowels or diphthongs. • cannot occur after diphthongs. • , and do not occur. ==Historic sound changes==

Dutch, with the exception of the Limburg dialects, did not participate in the second Germanic consonant shift: • > : German machen vs. Dutch , English make • > : German Schaf vs. Dutch , English sheep • > : German Wasser vs. Dutch , English water Dutch has also preserved the fricative variety of Proto-Germanic * as (although often devoiced to and mandatorily at the end of words) unlike some dialects of German, which have generalised the stop , and English, which has lost the fricative variety through regular sound changes. • > : German logen vs. Dutch vs. English lie(d) However, Dutch has undergone a fortition of to like High (and Low) German: • > : German das, Dutch vs. English that Dutch also underwent a few changes of its own: • Words with -old, -olt or -ald and -alt have lost the in favor of a diphthong mostly in Middle Dutch, as a result of l-vocalisation. Compare English old, German alt, Dutch . • changed to , spelled , but it was later reverted in many words by analogy with other forms. Compare English loft, German Luft, Dutch lucht . • Proto-Germanic turned into through palatalisation, which in turn became the diphthong , spelled . Long also diphthongised to , spelled . ==Sample==

The sample text is a reading of the first sentence of The North Wind and the Sun. Northern Standard Dutch The phonetic transcription illustrates a Western Netherlandic, educated, middle-generation speech and a careful colloquial style. Orthographic version De noordenwind en de zon hadden een discussie over de vraag wie van hun tweeën de sterkste was, toen er juist iemand voorbijkwam die een dikke, warme jas aanhad. Phonemic transcription Phonetic transcription Belgian Standard Dutch The phonetic transcription illustrates the speech of a highly educated 45-year-old male who speaks Belgian Dutch with a very slight regional Limburg accent. Orthographic version De noordenwind en de zon waren ruzie aan het maken over wie het sterkste was toen er een reiziger voorbij kwam met een warme jas aan. Phonemic transcription Phonetic transcription ==See also==