# Consonant gemination vs. repetition



## Saley

Hello, everybody!

Do you know about any language where the same consonant sound can be repeated without gemination?

For example, /nn/ in the English word _unknown_ is pronounced [n:] (long, or geminated, sound), but not [nn] (two independent consequent sounds).

Does any language contrast geminated and repeated consonants?


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## fdb

Can you give us an example of consonants that are "repeated" but not geminated?


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## Saley

Not in any of the languages I’m familiar with, but I can pronounce that.

The difference between [nn] and [n:] is that in the middle of the pronunciation of the former the tongue is retracted from the alveolar ridge for a while, but when pronouncing the latter it remains there all the time.

Say _un-_ and put the tongue into its natural position, make a pause, and then say _known_. Repeating this and shortening the duration of the pause you’ll approach to what I mean by repeated [n]’s (that’s not the correct English pronunciation).


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## fdb

Saley said:


> Not in any of the languages I’m familiar with,



That is what I want to know.


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## Saley

What do you mean? I wouldn’t ask if I knew such examples.
Or do you want to know what languages I’m familiar with?


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## Sobakus

Polish seems to be one such language: dzienny - Wiktionary I'm not sure if this pronunciation is actually used in normal speech but it sounds extremely unusual to me.


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## ahvalj

Here Annahme - Wiktionary the Austrian pronounces a gap between _n_ of the prefix and that of the root. If this pronunciation is ancient, the older stages of German that possessed long consonants may have had the contrast between proper long consonants (_nennen_) and appositions of two identical consonants at the morpheme boundaries (_anname_).


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## bearded

ahvalj said:


> proper long consonants (_nennen_)


Hello
The double n in _nennen _is not a real long consonant, as far as I know. Its function is to retain a short/open e in the first syllable, so it is actually just a written sign rather than a long/geminated sound in pronunciation.


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## ahvalj

It was in Middle German: West Germanic (German, Dutch, English) some centuries ago simplified its former long consonants (retained in North Germanic other than Danish, e. g. penna - Wiktionary).


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## Nino83

Here it seems that some Bavarian accents retain the long /n:/ in _nennen_.


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## Olaszinhok

Italian has a lot of geminate consonants, so we come accross the above phenomenon quite often. For example in the following words:
Innato (in:ato) = innate, genetic
In natura (innatura)
It seems to me that in the first example the n sound is a bit longer and there is never a pause between the two Ns.


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## Nino83

The same at word boundaries. For example, _con noi_ is pronounced [kon'noi], with a long /n:/.


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## bearded

Hi, Nino
So what you and Olaszinhok are saying is that in Italian no n-sound 'repetition without gemination' exists, if I understand you correctly. I agree.
And it's true that in Bavarian, Austrian and Swiss German speech consonant geminations can be heard, contrary to standard ('northern') German.

However, leaving dialects and extinct languages (like Middle German) aside, I wonder if modern English speakers make a slight stop between the n's in words like _non-native, _thus respecting in speech the separation shown by the hyphen.


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## Nino83

Hi, bearded.
What I meant to say is that in Italian when there are two consecutive "n" the sound is always geminated, unless you make a pause.
In Namibia = /in:amibia/ but with a pause, in | Namibia /in namibia/.
Once I read a paper where it was said that in English the Germanic prefix "un-" triggers gemination (like in _unnamed, unnatural_) while the Romance prefix "in-" doesn't. In these cases there is a single "n", like in innate [ɪˈneɪt].


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## bearded

So I understood you right, Nino.
And thanks for the interesting info abt. English un/in- (+n)  differentiation. Probably, English speakers do not sense the  'in' in _innate _and other words of Latin origin, as a prefix, but rather as intrinsically belonging to those words - contrary to un- (which shows once more that English is a language of substantial Germanic nature).


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## Olaszinhok

Bearded, I dare say you didn't understand me right because I have to admit that I can hear a slight difference in pronunciation between_ innato and in natura _for the reasons I tried to explain in my previous post. Probably, it's just me... I don't know.


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## bearded

Olaszinhok said:


> I dare say you didn't understand me right


Hi Olaszinhok
Sorry, you are right.  But do you really feel there is a difference in nn pronunciation between _innato/in natura/innaturale? _In the case of
_in natura, _I think the pause is mental rather than in speech, and I pronounce all three expressions in the same way (n: ).


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## Olaszinhok

Hello Bearded.
I've tried to read the three words many times but I still notice a difference in pronunciation, probably, as you said, for a sort of mental reason but I tend to pronounce _in natura_ differently as if the n weren't geminate or making a slight pause between the two n's.


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## Borin3

Serbian:
Najjači- the strongest    naj is superlative prefix, jak-strong. Since two J came up together they should both be written, but mostly they are pronounced as one J especially in a rush in this case. J in Serbian is pronounced as y in *y*ou. Other examples where both J must be pronounced: najjasniji- the clearest, najjužniji- the most to the south (the southest), najjednostavniji (the simplest). 
Plavooki- blue-eyed     Plavo-blue, oki-eyed    Always written with two O, and always pronounced with two O. This is a vowel anyway
S/Sa-with   In South Serbia people sometimes say sas(with) and sometimes just ss pronouncing both s.  For example "ss kim?"- with whom. I don't know why


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Here it seems that some Bavarian accents retain the long /n:/ in _nennen_.


It is correct that in Barvarian dialects some consonants have retained phonemic length distinction. But I wouldn't deduce that from any Forvo samples. There is a lot of spelling-pronunciation involved there.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> There is a lot of spelling-pronunciation involved there.


You could be right but if a speaker doesn't have geminate consonants it is unlikely that he pronounces a long consonant even if there are two consecutive consonants written on the sheet.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> You could be right but if a speaker doesn't have geminate consonants it is unlikely that he pronounces a long consonant even if there are two consecutive consonants written on the sheet.


That is not true. People are aware that double consonants are supposed to mean "audible in both syllables". And the person is from Franconia, not from Bavaria (political and cultural/linguistic borders do not always concur).


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> That is not true.


I don't know. Pope Francis regularly, even when he reads directly from a paper, pronounces _hanno_ /anno/ (they have) as _ano_ /ano/ (anus).


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> I don't know. Pope Francis regularly, even when he reads directly from a paper, pronounces _hanno_ /anno/ (they have) as _ano_ /ano/ (anus).


I am not sure what that has to do with anything. Not having long consonants only means that speakers of a language fail to hear _ano_ and _anno_ as different words and not that they won't vary the length. And I was speaking specifically about German. Teachers would artificially lengthen or double geminate consonants.


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## Olaszinhok

berndf said:


> I am not sure what that has to do with anything. Not having long consonants only means that speakers of a language fail to hear _ano_ and _anno_ as different words and not that they won't vary the length. And I was speaking specifically about German. Teachers would artificially lengthen or double geminate consonants



I have to agree with Nino83, Spanish and Brazilian people in particular but I'd say most foreign people in general have trouble pronouncing  geminate consonants  properly in Italian. It is probably the main mistake they make even if they have been living in Italy for many years.
Once I was talking to a Spanish lady about this subject and she admitted that she wasn't  able to recognise the difference between simple and geminate consonants at all.


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## berndf

I was never speaking about Spanish or Portuguese. Nor about either or Germans speaking Italian. I was talking about Germans speaking German. Gemination does have an audible effect on the pronunciation of the word even though it is not lengthening of the consonant. The historical difference between long and short consonant is something people are aware of and they do tend to lengthen or double it in artificial speech contexts like forvo recordings even if it is not relevant.


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## gburtonio

I think in order to ask and answer this question, you need to define your terms first. What criteria would you use to define 'repetition' as opposed to 'gemination'? Would there have to be an audible pause? If so, how long would it need to be?

From a phonological point of view, English doesn't have gemination, but repetition. We hear two /n/ sounds in 'in nature', although if you were to analyse a recording of natural speech, you probably wouldn't find clear boundaries between the two sounds. But I'm not sure that's really very significant – it's generally impossible to work out exactly where one sound ends and another begins, and there are all kinds of processes by which sounds can 'colour' one another when they occur together. However, if I were to dictate very carefully, perhaps to computer recognition software, a sentence containing the words 'in nature', I might well pronounce the two /n/ sounds completely separately, in a way that doesn't remind one of gemination in a language like Italian. So phonetically it would be different from the natural speech version of 'in nature', but phonologically it would be the same.

You may as well ask if the phonological system of any language is such that every single speech sound is pronounced completely distinctly from both the preceding sound and the following sound. The answer of course is going to be 'no'.


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## fdb

ahvalj said:


> Here Annahme - Wiktionary the Austrian pronounces a gap between _n_ of the prefix and that of the root.



Here too I suspect that it is a deliberate lento pronunciation.


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## Nino83

gburtonio said:


> English doesn't have gemination, but repetition


Do you hear two consecutive "n" or a long "n" in this sample?
unnatural


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> I was never speaking about Spanish or Portuguese. Nor about either or Germans speaking Italian.


Anyway two German journalists (Udo Gumpel and Tobias Piller) seem to pronounce long consonants better than English/American journalists (like Alan Friedman). Expecially Gumpel has a good accent.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Anyway two German journalists (Udo Gumpel and Tobias Piller) seem to pronounce long consonants better than English/American journalists (like Alan Friedman). Expecially Gumpel has a good accent.


That is not difficult to imagine. Observing consonant length is much easier to learn for a German than for most English speakers because we have the notion of phonemic length in our language albeit only in vowels. And because gemination or non-gemination modifies the preceding vowel in a much more predictable way than in English, Germans are used to paying attention to double consonants. Also there are phonemically relevant long consonants created by liaison artefacts, like _im Meer_ = [ɪm:e:ɐ]. Thinking of such cases is a trick we get taught when learning Italian (e.g. imagining _immaculata_ as if spelled _im Makulata_).


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> Also there are phonemically relevant long consonants created by liaison artefacts, like _im Meer_ = [ɪm:e:ɐ].


Do you mean that in German there are minimal pairs of this type (word + word with along consonant vs. single word with short consonant)?
English speaker could be taught to pronounce _fatto_ as _fat toe_ (very fast), for the long /t/.


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## berndf

Failure to pronounce the _m_ long or double would result in people hearing _im Meer_ as a deviant pronunciation of _immer_.


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## Saley

gburtonio said:


> I think in order to ask and answer this question, you need to define your terms first. What criteria would you use to define 'repetition' as opposed to 'gemination'? Would there have to be an audible pause? If so, how long would it need to be?


I’m not sure about the duration of the pause between repeated consonants, maybe it should be as short as possible. The principal distinction is that both repeated sounds should retain all their phases of articulation without merging. If we talk about stop consonants (_b_, _k_, _m_, _n_ etc.), the difference is as follows:

*repeated:* catch — hold — release — catch — hold — release
*geminated:* catch — hold (long) — release
(However, the left- and rightmost phases might be affected by neighbouring sounds.)
The recording Sobakus found (dzienny - Wiktionary) is a good example of what I would describe as repeated consonants. In [nn] the tongue loses touch with the alveolar ridge for a moment, but this wouldn’t occur in [n:]; in [nn] we can hear two bursts (the final phase of each [n]). The same difference is between [ll] and [l:] although it isn’t a stop. I can’t say anything about fricatives.
That was my own definition, but I believe linguists can provide a better one.


gburtonio said:


> From a phonological point of view, English doesn't have gemination, but repetition. We hear two /n/ sounds in 'in nature', although if you were to analyse a recording of natural speech, you probably wouldn't find clear boundaries between the two sounds. <...> However, if I were to dictate very carefully, perhaps to computer recognition software, a sentence containing the words 'in nature', I might well pronounce the two /n/ sounds completely separately, in a way that doesn't remind one of gemination in a language like Italian. So phonetically it would be different from the natural speech version of 'in nature', but phonologically it would be the same.


This may indicate that the two pronunciations are in free variation in English, but the one used normally in natural speech is gemination. It would be interesting to find if in any language repetition is the only option overall or at least in certain situations.


Olaszinhok said:


> I tend to pronounce _in natura_ differently as if the n weren't geminate or making a slight pause between the two n's.


Does your tongue remain pressed against the alveolar ridge during the pause?


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## Nino83

Saley said:


> In [nn] the tongue loses touch with the alveolar ridge for a moment


Only to clarify that in IPA both [nn] and [n:] are used to transcribe long, geminate, consonants. A better way to transcribe repeated consonants is [n n], in order to avoid ambiguities and misunderstandings.


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## merquiades

In Contemporary French the_ e_ in the _er_ of future and conditional verb tenses is usually dropped:  for example,  _elle_ _achètera_ is pronounced routinely as _elle achètra_.  In verbs that end in -_rer _in the infinitive both _r_ are articulated clearly as to distinguish the conditional from the imperfect tense, or the future tense from the literary past.  It is an important distinction and there are many verbs in this category.  
_Prépara / Prépar(e)ra / Préparait / Prépar(e)rait_
Many verbs in _-rir_ also present this pattern.  In spelling the _-i-_ is eliminated.  However, both r are clearly pronounced
_Courait / Courrait_


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## Hulalessar

gburtonio said:


> I think in order to ask and answer this question, you need to define your terms first. What criteria would you use to define 'repetition' as opposed to 'gemination'? Would there have to be an audible pause? If so, how long would it need to be? etc



Just what I was going to say!

There is a clear difference between _unaimed _and _unnamed _and it is more than the difference between _-n-_ and _-nn- _in Italian, even the if the first _n _is not quite the same as the second. If we compare _unnamed _with _unmown _the _-nn-_ and _-nm- _there are two distinct sounds in each case.

Whether called repetition or gemination, it only occurs across word and morpheme boundaries in English and is not otherwise phonemic.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> There is a clear difference between _unaimed _and _unnamed_


That is [n] vs. [nn], not [n:] vs. [nn]. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be sure if a pronunciation with [n:] would more likely be heard as _unaimed_ or as _unnamed_. That would be an interesting experiment. I would also assume that must speakers insert I glottal stop in _unaimed_.


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## gburtonio

Nino83 said:


> Do you hear two consecutive "n" or a long "n" in this sample?
> unnatural



Hard to say. I certainly hear two consecutive, but separate, speech sounds, but of course I know the spelling of the word and it's hard to put that out of your mind. Certainly if I listen carefully, I might start to feel like I hear something more like a long 'n', but at that point I thinking about things phonetically rather than phonemically.



Saley said:


> This may indicate that the two pronunciations are in free variation in English, but the one used normally in natural speech is gemination. It would be interesting to find if in any language repetition is the only option overall or at least in certain situations.



I wouldn't call this free variation. Like other features of connected speech in English, such as elision or assimilation, the phonological processes aren't obligatory. We can speak slowly and carefully if we wish, and this is more likely in certain contexts, but it could also be – for example – in extremely informal contexts where we feel we are being misheard. But I don't consider this the same thing as free variation.



berndf said:


> That is [n] vs. [nn], not [n:] vs. [nn]. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be sure if a pronunciation with [n:] would more likely be heard as _unaimed_ or as _unnamed_. That would be an interesting experiment. I would also assume that must speakers insert I glottal stop in _unaimed_.



For me, the correct phonetic transcription of 'unnamed' would contain [nː]. And that pronunciation would never lead me to hearing 'unaimed'. With other words, e.g. 'unusual', using [nː] instead of [n] would sound very strange. I certainly have no glottal stop when I produce 'unaimed' – why would you assume one?


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## Hulalessar

gburtonio said:


> I wouldn't call this free variation. Like other features of connected speech in English, such as elision or assimilation, the phonological processes aren't obligatory. We can speak slowly and carefully if we wish, and this is more likely in certain contexts, but it could also be – for example – in extremely informal contexts where we feel we are being misheard. But I don't consider this the same thing as free variation.



Very much the case and it makes it difficult to decide exactly what you are doing when it comes to syllable boundaries - when we can tell where they occur. Where is the division? Is there a glottal stop or are you just stopping and starting again? Are plosives not fully released? Is writing influencing our perception?


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## berndf

gburtonio said:


> For me, the correct phonetic transcription of 'unnamed' would contain [nː]. And that pronunciation would never lead me to hearing 'unaimed'.


That's what I think as well.


gburtonio said:


> I certainly have no glottal stop when I produce 'unaimed' – why would you assume one?


Because the stress is on the second syllable. In words like unavailable there is no glottal stop but _unaimed_ would follow the pattern of _unaired_ and there is clearly a glottal stop: Pronunciations for unaired (from unaired to unaired).


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## Saley

Hulalessar said:


> <...> _unnamed_ <...> the first _n_ is not quite the same as the second.


I’ve just listened to several recordings of such words on the Internet and I have to admit that my attempt to describe English /nn/ simply as geminated [n:] seems to be unsuccessful.
Although in some of the recordings I did hear [n:], in others I heard that the first and the second parts of this long sound are somewhat different as you say.
In some recordings I hear the second part a bit more palatalized than the first one if it’s the right term (I suspect it isn’t). Maybe it’s something similar to _dark L_ (syllable-final) vs. _light L_ (syllable-initial) distinction?
In other ones the second part seems to be pronounced as a higher pitch since the second syllable is stressed.
However, I didn’t hear a gap between _n_’s in any of the recordings; the first _n_ doesn’t have the release phase.

Things seem to be more complicated than the two-way distinction “geminated vs. repeated”.


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## Nino83

I haven't said it because I was curious to hear your opinions. As a native speaker of a language with long consonants, I hear a long n in unnatural.


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## gburtonio

berndf said:


> Because the stress is on the second syllable. In words like unavailable there is no glottal stop but _unaimed_ would follow the pattern of _unaired_ and there is clearly a glottal stop: Pronunciations for unaired (from unaired to unaired).



That to me is a totally unnatural (ha!) pronunciation, even for a citation form. It sounds like somebody trying much too hard to say the word clearly, but ending up with something a little strange. If you listen to the recordings for dictionary entries for words like 'unable', 'unarmed' etc. you don't hear a glottal stop. For example, the entries in the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> I haven't said it because I was curious to hear your opinions. As a native speaker of a language with long consonants, I hear a long n in unnatural.


Exactly like my German example (_im Meer_). I am not sure, though, that this would work with stops, as in your examples _fat toe_. A_ t _is not a _t_ if it is not releases. And in some accent aspiration is even mandatory (like in German) and [tʰtʰ] can certainly not be contracted to a long consonant.


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## berndf

gburtonio said:


> That to me is a totally unnatural (ha!) pronunciation, even for a citation form. It sounds like somebody trying much too hard to say the word clearly, but ending up with something a little strange. If you listen to the recordings for dictionary entries for words like 'unable', 'unarmed' etc. you don't hear a glottal stop. For example, the entries in the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary.


Unarmed from the OALD. Both UK and US pronunciations with glottal stop.

Unarmed from the CALD. UK version with glottal stop, US version without.


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## gburtonio

berndf said:


> Unarmed from the OALD. Both UK and US pronunciations with glottal stop.
> 
> Unarmed from the CALD. UK version with glottal stop, US version without.



I don't hear the gottal stops that you're hearing. I ran all five recordings through PRAAT and the only spectrogram that looks to me to show a glottal stop is the one for 'unaired'.


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## Hulalessar

Saley said:


> Things seem to be more complicated than the two-way distinction “geminated vs. repeated”.



There does seem to be a continuum and in English the point in the continuum would appear to depend on the speed of speech without any particular articulation being characterised as correct or incorrect.

A problem is that phonetics is beset with continua and there are only a limited number of names or phonetic symbols available. Whilst _x_ and _y_ may be considered distinct one phonetician may describe an instance as _x _and another as _y_. Only spectographic analysis can show differences with any accuracy. If there is one thing that spectographic analyis has shown it is that the articulation of any phone depends on what precedes it and follows it. The analysis of speech into phonemes is to an extent artificial because speech is continuous.


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## Sobakus

I really don't understand what continuum or what distinct sounds we're talking about here. Surely nobody would suggest that pronouncing _unnatural_ with a release between the two /n/ - as exemplified in dzienny - Wiktionary - is possible in English? Even if it were two separate words, eg. Ann Natural, there wouldn't be any release. Only in French or Italian accents is such a pronunciation possible, complete with a schwa between the two consonants.


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## Sobakus

gburtonio said:


> I don't hear the gottal stops that you're hearing. I ran all five recordings through PRAAT and the only spectrogram that looks to me to show a glottal stop is the one for 'unaired'.


The recording berndf singled out has noticeably less glottalisation than the other three. Whether that is due to the more fronted quality of the vowel or if there's no relation between the two I can't say, but I can hear it. It's the closest to being a full-on stop in the British OALD recording and is probably interpreted by most people as a change in pitch so characteristic of the British accent.


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## gburtonio

Sobakus said:


> The recording berndf singled out has noticeably less glottalisation than the other three. Whether that is due to the more fronted quality of the vowel or if there's no relation between the two I can't say, but I can hear it. It's the closest to being a full-on stop in the British OALD recording and is probably interpreted by most people as a change in pitch so characteristic of the British accent.



The spectrograms don't bear this out. The recording for 'unaired' shows a period in which there is almost no vibration between the 'un' and 'aired' segments, which is the glottal stop. The other words don't have this – there are periodic waves of slightly less intensity than the vowels the precede and follow, but nothing to suggest any kind of stop sound.


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## Hulalessar

Sobakus said:


> I really don't understand what continuum or what distinct sounds we're talking about here. Surely nobody would suggest that pronouncing _unnatural_ with a release between the two /n/ - as exemplified in dzienny - Wiktionary - is possible in English? Even if it were two separate words, eg. Ann Natural, there wouldn't be any release. Only in French or Italian accents is such a pronunciation possible, complete with a schwa between the two consonants.



The phonetic transcription shows a sylllable break between the two vowels, but I am hearing a vowel. The word sounds trisyllabic to me.


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## berndf

gburtonio said:


> The spectrograms don't bear this out. The recording for 'unaired' shows a period in which there is almost no vibration between the 'un' and 'aired' segments, which is the glottal stop. The other words don't have this – there are periodic waves of slightly less intensity than the vowels the precede and follow, but nothing to suggest any kind of stop sound.


No, glottalisation does not necessarily produce a quiet zone in spectrogram. I have attached two recordings, which sound admittedly a bit artificial, but they demonstrate glottalisation without a quiet zone.

unarmed1.mp3
unarmed1.PNG

unarmed2.mp3
unarmed2.PNG


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## Sobakus

Hulalessar said:


> The phonetic transcription shows a sylllable break between the two vowels, but I am hearing a vowel. The word sounds trisyllabic to me.


This is very typical of English speakers, yet a Pole hears no vowel there. That's due to the fact that as a result of reduction, what's essentially a parasitic schwa between two separately released voiced consonants can be a vowel in English, and to get many English natives to pronounce the Russian soft liquids correctly you have to make them insert a high front vowel after the consonant. In contrast, even a full schwa does not sound like a vowel to an Italian (hence the stereotypical "It's-uh good-uh").


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## Nino83

You have three options: 
a) release with aspiration 
b) release with a vowel 
c) no audible release 
English speakers use only a) and c)


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## gburtonio

berndf said:


> No, glottalisation does not necessarily produce a quiet zone in spectrogram. I have attached two recordings, which sound admittedly a bit artificial, but they demonstrate glottalisation without a quiet zone.
> 
> unarmed1.mp3
> unarmed1.PNG
> 
> unarmed2.mp3
> unarmed2.PNG



I agree there is a certain degree of glottalisation there but you were originally talking about inserting a glottal stop, and I don't feel that these recordings show that. The spectrograms of these two look similar to the dictionary entries but still nothing like the 'unaired' recording, which clearly has a stop inserted and is very unnatural. It is possible (but not obligatory or predictable) to have a 'hard attack' (i.e. insertion of a pre-vocalic glottal stop) but this is generally word initial but it's strange to find it within a word. It's certainly not something I'd predict in any of these -un + vowel words. I think the only time it would sound natural is if the speaker felt they had been misheard, saying e.g. 'No, I didn't say 'unaired', I said 'unʔarmed'.


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## berndf

gburtonio said:


> I agree there is a certain degree of glottalisation there but you were originally talking about inserting a glottal stop, and I don't feel that these recordings show that. The spectrograms of these two look similar to the dictionary entries but still nothing like the 'unaired' recording, which clearly has a stop inserted and is very unnatural. It is possible (but not obligatory or predictable) to have a 'hard attack' (i.e. insertion of a pre-vocalic glottal stop) but this is generally word initial but it's strange to find it within a word. It's certainly not something I'd predict in any of these -un + vowel words. I think the only time it would sound natural is if the speaker felt they had been misheard, saying e.g. 'No, I didn't say 'unaired', I said 'unʔarmed'.


Both were pronounced with a firm glottal closure albeit a very short one. The recordings were expressly made for that purpose. In my native language the glottal stop is very close to having phonemic status, some linguists actually think it has. The two recordings correspond to how you normally pronounce it in German. The glottal stop you found so unnatural I would maybe describe as [?:].

Here are three pronunciations of Arabic ['ra?s] (=_head_), a language where [?] is definitely phonemic. In two of the three, the closure is relatively long (the way you have it in mind when you say "glottal stop"). In the third one it is very short but for me it is still recognisable.

(Interestingly, I find a word-final [?] as it exists in English dialects with t-glottalisation difficult to identify. For me a final [?] would have to be aspirated to be easily identifiable, as it is in Arabic.)


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## fdb

This is becoming a very interesting topic. In virtually all Arabic dialects the word for “head” is rās, without any glottal stop. In the sample from “forvo” the speakers are all giving their versions of the written form raʼs (this is a basic problem with Arabic forvo: the speakers do not use their genuine dialect, but try to emulate classical Arabic, however badly). To my ears, only the Egyptian lady has something resembling a true hamza. For the genuine classical pronunciation it is better to listen to Qur’anic cantillation, for example here: Quran - Recite & Listen Quran Online where the glottal stop in ar-raʼsu is very distinctly audible.


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## Nino83

gburtonio said:


> I certainly hear two consecutive, but separate, speech sounds


And what do you hear in penna?


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## berndf

gburtonio said:


> Hard to say. I certainly hear two consecutive, but separate, speech sounds, but of course I know the spelling of the word and it's hard to put that out of your mind. Certainly if I listen carefully, I might start to feel like I hear something more like a long 'n', but at that point I thinking about things phonetically rather than phonemically.





Nino83 said:


> And what do you hear in penna?


The way he describes what he hears, it seems that he identifies the closure, which belongs to the first syllable, and the release, which belongs to the second syllable, as two separate sounds and not the sequence closure-maintained nasal-release as a single sound. In _penn-a_ (which, I maintain, cannot pronounced without a glottal stop) you would only hear the closure but not the release and in _pe-nna_ only the release and not the closure. Only in _pen-na_ you can hear both.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> Only in _pen-na_ you can hear both.


But this is how long consonants work in Italian or Japanese. They're two consonants, the first has attack but not release while the second has no attack but it has a release. _Fatto_ [fat̚to], _sacc_o [sak̚ko], _tappo_ [tap̚po],　言った (_itta_) [it̚ta]　学校 (_gakkō_) [gak̚koː]　一杯 (_ippai_) [ip̚pai].  
With fricatives, sibilants and trills it is different, because they can last longer, but long stops and some sonorants (m, n, l) work so, they're a sequence of unreleased consonant - released consonant. 
This is why I'm asking that. If an English speaker hears _penna_ as _pen na_, then he hears _fatto_ as _fat toe_, _sacco_ as _sac caw_ and _tappo_ as _tap paw_.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> But this is how long consonants work in Italian or Japanese.


In those two languages but not in all languages that have long consonants. In Swedish, e.g., _penn_ is a legal syllable (e.g. in _pennskaft_). This originally was so in all Germanic languages, e.g., in German and English there once was a phonemic contrast between _man _and _mann _(still preserved in spelling in modern German, pronoun_ man_ vs. noun _Mann_).


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## gburtonio

berndf said:


> Both were pronounced with a firm glottal closure albeit a very short one. The recordings were expressly made for that purpose. In my native language the glottal stop is very close to having phonemic status, some linguists actually think it has. The two recordings correspond to how you normally pronounce it in German. The glottal stop you found so unnatural I would maybe describe as [?:].



Yes, in English it's generally considered allophonic variation, but that's really when it's replaces /t/. Then we have the slightly muddy area of glottalisation or glottal reinforcement, which affects a /p t k tʃ/, and is harder to hear, to the extent that most people probably aren't aware that they do it. Then we do also have the pre-vocalic 'hard attack', which again for me isn't particularly noticeable unless you listen out for it, but, as I said, isn't supposed to happen within a word, and only in emphatic contexts. So I'm curious what it's doing there in the dictionary definition recordings. (And if I'm perfectly honest, I'm still not 100% convinced it is there, since I don't hear it and in the relevant part of the spectrograms I see periodic waves that look characteristic of a sonorant rather than a stop – but I will trust in your more finely tuned L1 German ear.)



Nino83 said:


> And what do you hear in penna?



I'm at a disadvantage here as I speak Italian so I know there are two sounds, and I hear them clearly. I think L1 English non-speakers of Italian do hear the gemination, as they would always include some kind of gemination when doing a pretend Italian accent or speaking made up 'Italian'. But at the same time, it's certainly easy for me to miss a double consonant or fail to pronounce one in Italian.



berndf said:


> The way he describes what he hears, it seems that he identifies the closure, which belongs to the first syllable, and the release, which belongs to the second syllable, as two separate sounds and not the sequence closure-maintained nasal-release as a single sound. In _penn-a_ (which, I maintain, cannot pronounced without a glottal stop) you would only hear the closure but not the release and in _pe-nna_ only the release and not the closure. Only in _pen-na_ you can hear both.



It's really hard to say 'what I hear' because I know the spelling and morphology of words like 'unnatural'. On a phonemic level I feel confident that I hear two speech sounds. At a phonetic level, I suspect there would be some variation in my analysis, from speaker to speaker, recording to recording.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> In Swedish, e.g., _penn_ is a legal syllable (e.g. in _pennskaft_).


In fact I don't perceive the North Germanic "nn" as a long "n", for example mennskur.
I hear an "n" both in menskop and pennskrin. 
But I do hear a clear difference between mat and matt (with a long "t" composed by an unreleased "t" followed by a released "t").
On the other hand I hear a long "n" in _unnamed_.


gburtonio said:


> so I know there are two sounds, and I hear them clearly


But do you hear two "n" sounds, like in _unnamed_?


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> In fact I don't perceive the North Germanic "nn" as a long "n", for example mennskur.
> I hear an "n" both in menskop and pennskrin.
> But I do hear a clear difference between mat and url=https://it.forvo.com/search/matt/sv/]matt (with a long "t" composed by an unreleased "t" followed by a released "t".
> On the other hand I hear a long "n" in _unnamed_.


That reinforces my suspicion that what you in Italian are listening for is indeed the separation of closure and release. This could mean that there is indeed a relevant difference between [n:] and [nn] and Italian has only the latter.


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## Nino83

But I do hear a long "n" in Swedish penna as I do hear a long "t" in Swedish _matt, mätt, mått_.
I think it is a problem of release.
In Swedish _penna_ the "n" is released while in _pennskrin_ not, so I don't perceive it while in _matt, mätt, mått_ the last "t" is released (with aspiration) so I perceive it.
I'd say Italian has only [n̚n] (where the second "n" is released) while Swedish has both [n̚n] and [ n̚n̚ ] (or [ n̚ː ] if you prefer).
In fact I've more troubles with måttsked, where the "t" is not released very clearly. While in måtta is even clearer that there is a long "t" because it is released with a following vowel.


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## gburtonio

Nino83 said:


> But do you hear two "n" sounds, like in _unnamed_?



Yes, absolutely. I hear /nn/ – there's clearly more than one /n/ and my phonological system has no concept of a long consonant, so there's really no other possibility. But my phonetic analysis probably wouldn't be [nn] in most cases.


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## Nino83

gburtonio said:


> Yes, absolutely. I hear /nn/


Great! 
And do you also hear _fatto_ as _fat toe_, _sacco_ as _sack caw_ and _tappo_ as _tap paw_?


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## berndf

gburtonio said:


> in the relevant part of the spectrograms I see periodic waves that look characteristic of a sonorant


Yes, the stop is to brief to let voicing subside completely. It is like the d/t merger in the tapped intervocalic _t_ in American English in words like _better_.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> I think it is a problem of release.


Yes, that is what I said.

You need both closure and release to be audible to recognize the consonant as long. That is a hint that you have only [nn] and not [n:].


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> That is a hint that you have only [nn] and not [n:].


Yes, because in Italian the long "n", like all the other long consonants, is present only in intervocalic position.


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## gburtonio

Nino83 said:


> Great!
> And do you also hear _fatto_ as _fat toe_, _sacco_ as _sack caw_ and _tappo_ as _tap paw_?



I'm not sure I can really answer that. I hear them as Italian words, not as very approximate English equivalents. Aside from the obvious difference in the vowels, I would pronounce the double consonants in the English phrases differently from Italian. 'Fat toe' would be /tt/ but [ʔtʰ], 'sack caw' would be /kk/ but [ʔkkʰ], and [tap paw] would be /pp/ but [ʔppʰ], with the [ʔ] in the second and third ones representing glottal reinforcement with no audible release of the first consonant. Obviously this isn't how they'd be realised in Italian so they would sound different, not the same.

As as innocent L1 English speaker with no knowledge of Italian, if I was told I was going to hear three single words, I would probably hear /t/, /k/ and /p/ (i.e. not double consonants). If I wasn't told the number of words, I might have reason to think that I was hearing six words rather than three (i.e. 'fat' 'to' etc.) but I can't be sure of that.


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## franknagy

Saley said:


> Hello, everybody!
> 
> Do you know about any language where the same consonant sound can be repeated without gemination?


What is gemination?


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## Red Arrow

Nino83 said:


> In fact I don't perceive the North Germanic "nn" as a long "n", for example mennskur.
> I hear an "n" both in menskop and pennskrin.
> But I do hear a clear difference between mat and matt (with a long "t" composed by an unreleased "t" followed by a released "t").
> On the other hand I hear a long "n" in _unnamed_.
> 
> But do you hear two "n" sounds, like in _unnamed_?


Dutch doesn't have consonant gemination *(except perhaps West-Flemish which might have long [n:]?)* but after some practice, I do hear long n and long t in pennskrin and matt.

I don't hear long n in the mennskur recording, though. Some Swedes make a clearer distinction between long and short consonants. I don't think it has got much to do with articulation. Even people who don't articulate at all can still make a clear distinction, whereas articulating people on Forvo sometimes don't  Yet native spearers hear a clear distinction by everyone.

Same thing with tones, apparantly. Some Chinese people make a clearer distinction than others and learners are adviced to imitate someone who makes a clear distinction rather than just anyone.


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