Catalan phonology

Consonants

Phonetic notes:

Obstruents

Voiced obstruents undergo final-obstruent devoicing so that fred ('cold', m. s.) is pronounced with [t], while fredes ('cold', f. pl.) is pronounced with [ð].

Stops

Voiced stops become lenited to approximants in syllable onsets, after continuants: /b/ → [β], /d/ → [ð], /ɡ/ → [ɣ]. Exceptions include /d/ after lateral consonants and /b/ after /f/, e.g. ull de bou [ˈuʎ də ˈβɔw] ('oeil-de-boeuf'), bolígraf boníssim [buˈɫiɣɾəv buˈnisim] ('excellent ballpoint'). Additionally, /b/ fails to lenite in non-betacist dialects. In the coda position, these sounds are always realized as stops except in many Valencian dialects, where they are lenited or pronounced with an approximant release.

In some Valencian dialects final /p, t, k/ can be lenited before a vowel: tot açò [ˈt̪oð aˈsɔ] ('all this').

In some dialects (e.g. many Valencian accents) initial /ɡ/ can be lenited: gata [ˈɣat̪a].

In many Catalan dialects (except Valencian), /b/ and /ɡ/ may be geminated in certain environments (e.g. poble [ˈpɔbːɫə] 'village', regla [ˈreɡːɫə] 'rule').

In Majorcan varieties, /k/ and /ɡ/ become [c] and [ɟ] 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 [ˈsaɲc] ('blood').

Affricates

The phonemic status of affricates is dubious; after other consonants, affricates are in free variation with fricatives, e.g. clenxa [ˈkɫɛɲtʃə] ~ [ˈkɫɛɲʃə] ('hair parting') and may be analyzed as either single phonemes or clusters of a stop and a fricative.

There is dialectal variation in regards to affricate length, with long affricates occurring in both Eastern and Western dialects such as in Majorca and few areas in Southern Valencia. Also, intervocalic affricates are predominantly long, especially those that are voiced or occurring immediately after a stressed syllable (e.g. metge [ˈmed.dʒə] 'medic'). In modern Valencian [dʒ] and [ddʒ] have merged into /dʒ/.

Fricatives

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

In some Valencian dialects, /s/ and /ʃ/ are auditorily similar such that neutralization may occur in the future. That is the case of Northern Valencian where /ʃ/ is depalatalized to [js̠ʲ] or [js̠] as in caixa ('box'). Central Valencian words like mig ('half') and lleig ('ugly') have been transcribed with [ts] rather than the expected [tʃ], and Southern Valencian /tʃ/ "has been reported to undergo depalatalization without merging with [ts]". 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. /z/ has merged with /s/, /dʒ/ has merged with /tʃ/, with only voiceless realizations occurring) and /v/ has merged with the [b ~ β] set.

Sonorants

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

The distribution of the two rhotics /r/ and /ɾ/ closely parallels that of Spanish. Between vowels, the two contrast (e.g. mirra [ˈmirə] 'myrrh' vs. mira [ˈmiɾə] 'look'), but they are otherwise in complementary distribution. [ɾ] appears in the onset, except in word-initial position (ruc), after /l/, /n/, and /s/ (honra, Israel), and in compounds where [r] is used. Different dialects vary in regards to rhotics in the coda with Western Catalan generally featuring [ɾ] and Central Catalan dialects like those of Barcelona or Girona featuring a weakly trilled [r] unless it precedes a vowel-initial word in the same prosodic unit, in which case [ɾ] appears (per [peɾ] in Western Catalan, [per] in Central Catalan). There is a free variation in "r" word-initially, after /l/, /n/, and /s/, and in compounds (if /r/ is preced by consonant), wherein /r/ is pronounced [r] or [ɹ], the latter is similar to English red: [r ~ ɹ]uc, hon[r ~ ɹ]a, Is[r ~ ɹ]ael.

In careful speech, /n/, /m/, and /l/ may be geminated (e.g. innecessari [inːəsəˈsaɾi] 'unnecessary'; emmagatzemar [əmːəɣədzəˈma] 'to store'; il·lusió [iɫːuziˈo] 'illusion'). A geminated /ʎʎ/ may also occur (e.g. ratlla [ˈraʎːə] 'line'). Wheeler (1979) analyzes intervocalic [r] as the result of gemination of a single rhotic phoneme: serra /ˈsɛɾɾə/ → [ˈsɛrə] 'saw, mountains' (this is similar to the common analysis of Spanish and Portuguese rhotics).

Vowels

Phonetic notes:

Stressed vowels

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

Contrasting series of the main Catalan dialects:

Unstressed vowels

In Eastern Catalan, vowels in unstressed position reduce to three : /a/, /e/, /ɛ/ → [ə]; /o/, /ɔ/, /u/ → [u]; /i/ remains unchanged. However there are some dialectal differences: Alguerese merges /a/, /e/, and /ɛ/ with [a]; and in most areas of Majorca, [o] can appear in unstressed position (that is, /o/ and /ɔ/ are usually reduced to [o]).

In Western Catalan, vowels in unstressed position reduce to five: /e/, /ɛ/ → [e]; /o/, /ɔ/ → [o]; /a/, /u/, /i/ remain unchanged. However, in some Western dialects reduced vowels tend to merge into different realizations in some cases:

Diphthongs and triphthongs

There are also a number of phonetic diphthongs and triphthongs, all of which begin and/or end in [j] or [w].

In standard Eastern Catalan, rising diphthongs (that is, those starting with [j] or [w]) are only possible in the following contexts:

Processes

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

The dialectal distribution of compensatory diphthongization is almost entirely dependent on the dorsal stop (/k~c/) 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 /ˈmeddʒə/ → [ˈmettʃə] ('medic'). In Barcelona, voiced stops may be fortified (geminated and devoiced); e.g. poble [ˈpɔpːɫə] '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 [ˈadɫəs]~[ˈaɫːəs] 'atlas', administrar [ədminisˈtɾa]~[əmːinisˈtɾa] 'to administer').

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

Stress

Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word (e.g. brúixola [ˈbɾuʃuɫə] 'compass', càstig [ˈkastik] 'punishment', pallús [pəˈʎus] 'fool').

Compound words and adverbs formed with /ˈment/ may have more than one stressed syllable (e.g. bonament [ˈbɔnəˈmen] 'willingly'; parallamps [ˈpaɾəˈʎams] 'lightning conductor') but every lexical word has just one stressed syllable.

Phonotactics

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

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

In Central Eastern Catalan, obstruents fail to surface word-finally when preceded by a homorganic consonant (e.g. /nt/ → [n]). Complex codas simplify only if the loss of the segment doesn't result in the loss of place specification.

When the suffix -erol [əˈɾɔɫ] is added to camp [ˈkam] it makes [kəmpəˈɾɔɫ], indicating that the underlying representation is |ˈkamp| (with subsequent cluster simplification), however when the copula [ˈes] is added it makes [ˈkam ˈes]. The resulting generalization is that this underlying /p/ 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 [ˈkamp]).

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

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

Word-final fricatives (except /f/) are voiced before a following vowel; e.g. bus enorme [ˈbuz əˈnormə] ('huge bus').

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

Dialectal variation

The differences in the vocalic systems outlined above are the main criteria used to differentiate between the major dialects: Wheeler (2005) distinguishes two major dialect groups, western and eastern dialects; the latter of which only allow [i], [ə], and [u] 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:

Historical development

Catalan shares features with neighboring Romance languages (Occitan, Italian, Sardinian, French, Spanish).

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