# Words starting with a long consonant



## Red Arrow

Hello everyone,

None of the European languages seem to have words starting with long consonants. I am talking about words where the gemination is always present, even after a pause. I wonder if there are any languages that do have this, and if not, then why is that?

I am not a linguist but simply interested.


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## Dymn

In Sicilian I think this does exist:


> In siciliano sono presenti molte parole con le consonanti duplicate a inizio parola. Le più comuni sono: _cci, nni, cchiù, 'ssa, 'ssi, 'ssu, cca, ddòcu, ddà_.


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## Pietruzzo

Dymn said:


> In Sicilian I think this does exist:



It also exists in standard Italian, even if the double consonant is not written. "Più" is always pronounced "ppiù".


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## Dymn

I thought it only happened in some contexts, but never after a pause. Is this the same as _raddoppiamento fonosintattico_?


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## apmoy70

Actually, some dialects of Greek do have initial long consonants and express it by gemination. In these dialects the place of articulation of nasal syllable-final *«-ν» -n* of the accusative, assimilates to that of a following nasal or voiced/unvoiced plosive, which affects consonant lengths. This metaplasm then becomes part of the word e.g: 

-Calabrian *«τή λλέπραν»* [ti͜ ˈlːepran] (fem.) = Standard MoGr *«τη(ν) λέπρα(ν)»* [ti(n) ˈlepra(n)] --> _the leprosy_ (accus.) > *«λλέπρα»* [ˈlːepra] (nom.) --> _leprosy_
-Rhodian *«το λλίον»* [to͜ ˈɫːi.on] (masc.) = Standard MoGr *«το(ν) λίγο(ν)»* [to(n) ˈliɣo(n)] --> _the small, little_ (accus.), aphetism of Classical *«ὀλίγος» ŏlígŏs* > *«λλίος»* [ˈɫːi.os] (nom.) --> _small, little_

In the Cypriot dialect, the phenomenon of lengthening initial consonants appears in loanwords and is often the attempt to pronounce aspiration (which is absent in MoGr) e.g:
-*«Κκέλης»* [ˈcːelis] (masc.) --> _bald_ < Turk. kel [cʰel]
-*«Κκαξ»* [kːak͡s] < Eng. cash [kʰæʃ]
-*«Ππίσσης»* [ˈpːisːis] (masc.) --> _stingy_ < Turk [pʰis] --> _filthy_

Often, this lengthening is spontaneous:
-Rhodian *«ππέφτω»* [ˈpːefto] --> _to fall_ < Byz. Gr. *«πέφτω» péphtō* (possibly from the Classical *«ἐπιπίπτω» ĕpipíptō* > *(ἐ)π(ι)πίπτω*)
-Kalymnian *«ππηδώ»* [pːiˈðo] --> _to jump_ (possibly from the Classical *«ἐπιπηδῶ» ĕpĭpēdô* > *(ἐ)π(ι)πηδῶ*)
-Rhodian *«Μμα»* [mːa] --> _but_ < Byz. Gr. *«ἀμμή» ammḗ* (possibly from the Classical *«ἄν μή» ắn mḗ* with aphesis and assimilation)
-Rhodian *«Νναι»* [nːe] --> _yes_ (possibly emphatic)


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## Pietruzzo

Dymn said:


> I thought it only happened in some contexts, but never after a pause. Is this the same as _raddoppiamento fonosintattico_?


As you know "raddoppiamento sintattico" depends on the position of a word in the sentence but there are also words in which the first consonant is always pronounced "doubled" . Some other examples could be "tre, blu, dio".


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## ilocas2

Polish has some words starting with *ss-*. *Ssać* (to suck) and derivatives. According to the pronunciation written on Wiktionary, they are pronounced with long *s*.


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## bearded

Pietruzzo said:


> "Più" is always pronounced "ppiù".


Please note that RedArrow said ''I'm talking about words where the gemination is *always* present''.  Now, in my opinion, such words do not exist in Standard Italian.  ''Più'' is only pronounced ppiù in case of _raddoppiamento fonosintattico, _but normally it's not pronounced like that: in _sempre più, non ci vado più _and similar, maybe it's pronounced 'ppiù' in Salento (no offense meant), but not in Standard Italian.
Besides, R.Arrow did not specify whether he meant initial gemination in writing or just in pronunciation. In writing, in Italy it can only be found in some dialects (like Romanesco, see Trilussa's or Belli's poems: _sempre bbene, _and Sicilian, as Dymn wrote). In pronunciation - except for some mostly southern dialects - only in case of _raddoppiamento sintattico - _therefore not permanent.
<First consonant always pronounced double,..''Tre, blu, dio''  > ''not in my name!''. You must be joking.


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## Olaszinhok

_Dio _/God is always pronounced with a geminate consonant in Standard Italian _DDio mio_!. The p in _più_ is not doubled in standard Italian.


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## bearded

Olaszinhok said:


> _Dio _/God is always pronounced with a geminate consonant in Standard Italian _DDio mio_!


I really don't think so. Where did you read such a rule? If you say _va' con Dio, _how can you pronounce a double d?  Sorry, I have to repeat: only in case of _raddoppiamento sintattico, _otherwise no double d. (Maybe you are making a confusion with _Iddio, oddio.._?). I cannot believe that you pronounce _il nostro ddio, il loro ddio.. _And in the plural, do you say _gli antichi ddei..?_


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## Pietruzzo

bearded said:


> in _sempre più, non ci vado più _and similar, maybe it's pronounced 'ppiù' in Salento (no offense meant), but not in Standard *northern* Italian


No offense meant.


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## bearded

Pietruzzo, can you please quote a reliable source stating that 'più' is _always _pronounced with double p in Standard Italian?


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## OBrasilo

Russian also has words that start with ss, eg. _ссора_ (ssora), which means argument, row, fight.


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## Pietruzzo

bearded said:


> Pietruzzo, can you please quote a reliable source stating that 'più' is _always _pronounced with double p in Standard Italian?


Sometimes it's difficult to say what is standard and what is not. For example in this interesting article (in Italian) you can read:


> È ampiamente diffuso in tutto il Centro-Sud il raddoppiamento in _più_,


 Should we assume that northern Italian is standard?
And again


> il raddoppiamento in _dio_ (ad es., _di _[dː]_io_) diffuso nelle varietà centromeridionali e nel toscano, e da questo passato alla pronuncia standard


 Which means, as far as I can understand, that the gemination in "dio" is acknowledged as standard.


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## bearded

In the same way,the fact that in Central/Southern Italy the 'ppiù' pronunciation is widespread, does not prove that it is standard.  Standard is standard and does not consider/include dialect-influenced varieties...
As for Dio, the name is so often preceded by a monosyllable ( oh Dio > oddio, etc. ) that in most cases the rule of _raddoppiamento sintattico _is applicable.
Do you pronounce _il loro ddio_?


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## Pietruzzo

bearded said:


> Do you pronounce _il loro ddio_?


Yes, actually, I do. But I'm not a scholar; I'm a _scolaro_ (and a southern one on top of that)


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## berndf

Pietruzzo said:


> It also exists in standard Italian, even if the double consonant is not written. "Più" is always pronounced "ppiù".


How would you be able to pronounce a _pp_ at the beginning of an utterance?


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## Pietruzzo

berndf said:


> How would you be able to pronounce a _pp_ at the beginning of an utterance?


I don't really know. I just do it.


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## berndf

Pietruzzo said:


> I don't really know. I just do it.


What a shame. Maybe someone else can. I can understand how to pronounce _di ppiù_ but not _ppiù_ in isolation.

@bearded ?


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## TheCrociato91

berndf said:


> How would you be able to pronounce a _pp_ at the beginning of an utterance?



In my variety of Italian I don't pronounce a geminate /p/ at the beginning of a word which is located at the beginning of a sentence (I hope that makes sense), which is one of the main features that enable me to recognize a speaker as having a Southern accent.

However, I _can_ (as in, I am able to) pronounce it, and I think any Italian speaker (regardless of their regional accent) would be able too.

According to Wikipedia [emphasis added]:
"Lengthened fricatives, nasals, laterals, approximants and trills are simply prolonged. In lengthened stops, the obstruction of the airway is prolonged, which delays release, and the "hold" is lengthened."

In other terms, in order to pronounce a lengthened /p/ at the beginning of an isolated word, one would just hold the air in for longer (and _possibly _stress the "burst" or "release" phase a tad more that they would regularly do).


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## berndf

TheCrociato91 said:


> In other terms, in order to pronounce a lenghtened /p/ at the beginning of an isolated word, one would just hold the air in for longe


I am aware of the definition of a long voiceless stop and that is precisely why I can't understand how it could be pronounced at the beginning of an utterance. You could not possibly hear how long a speaker "holds the air" if there is no sound before the closure. Both the closure and the release have to be audible to hear how long the air was held.


TheCrociato91 said:


> and _possibly _stress the "burst" or "release" phrase a tad more that they would regularly do


Yes, that would make sense. Increased energy is a frequent secondary characteristic of a long sound, which here would become the primary one.


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## TheCrociato91

berndf said:


> You could not possibly hear how long a speaker "holds the air" if there is no sound before the closure. Both the closure and the release have to be audible to hear how long the air was held.



That's a very good point and I'm not sure I have an answer to it. If we were talking long voiced stops, then I think it would be easier to recognize one at the beginning of a sentence because the speaker produces a kind of "mute vibration" (I don't know whether there's a term for that) before releasing the stop sound.
For example, if I were to pronounce [d:io] (which I wouldn't normally do ), the vocal folds would be vibrating in an audible (I think) way as I'm holding the air before releasing the [d].

That being said, while I'm aware of (and sometimes "use") the _raddoppiamento fonosintattico_, I'm still not totally convinced about the actual pronunciation of long stops at the beginning of isolated words. My previous comment didn't pretend to confirm that the phenomenon actually existed (which I'm not sure about), rather it was aimed at trying to explain how such a phenomenon works in theoretical terms. 




Pietruzzo said:


> For example in this interesting article (in Italian) you can read [...]


The article you provided the link to does not refer to the gemination of the /p/ sound when "più" is an isolated word, rather when it's in a sentence. That's how I read it at least.

"È ampiamente diffuso in tutto il Centro-Sud il raddoppiamento in _più_, che compare tanto nelle forme dialettali (ad es., il napol. [ˈvɔnːə ˈkːju ˈsːɔrdə] «vogliono *più *soldi», il calabrese [lu ˈkːu ˈgːranːi] «il *più *grande»), quanto in quelle dell’italiano regionale (ad es., _non lo faccio _*[pː]iù*,_ di _*[pː]iù*)".





Edited typos in #20: I meant "phase" (not "phrase") and I misspelled "lengthened".


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## Pietruzzo

TheCrociato91 said:


> My previous comment didn't pretend to confirm that the phenomenon actually existed (which I'm not sure about


Well, around here you could clearly hear the difference between "Più piano!(which is pronounced /ppiuppiàno/) and "Piano! (with no gemination). This demonstrates, if anything, that someone somewhere can do it.


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## Olaszinhok

First of all, you have to distinguish between _dio_ and its plural _dèi._ According to the "Grammatica Italiana" by Luca Serianni, the greatest contemporary Italian grammarian: the word Dio is geminated after every word ending in a vowel, so amor di _Dio_ is pronounced amor di _DDio_, the same can be said for other words, such as _Maria in Ave Maria_ and _Santo in Spirito Santo_, which are pronounced _Ave MMaria_ and _Spirito Ssanto_. All the examples I have just mentioned are exceptions to the main rules of _raddoppiamento fonosintattico_.
Standard Italian is essentially based upon Tuscan and it is not weird at all that a Northern Italian may be puzzled to hear these forms, because they don't even apply the Raddoppiamento fonosintattico properly.


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## TheCrociato91

Pietruzzo said:


> Well, around here you could clearly hear the diffrence between "Più piano!(which is pronounced /ppiuppiàno/) and "Piano! (with no gemination). This demonstrates, if anything, that someone somewhere can do it.



I probably expressed myself poorly. I don't question "piano" as in "più *piano*" being pronounced /piu*pp*iàno/, which is in keeping with the "rules" of the _raddoppiamento fonosintattico_ ("piano" is preceded by a stressed monosyllable).

My question is: are you sure that the /p/ in "più" is _also_ pronounced as long, given that it's at the beginning of an utterance?
Besides, is there even an actual _audible_ difference if you pronounced the /p/ in "più" as long rather than short? (which is what @berndf was curious about). If there's none, I cannot fathom how one could possibly determine that the /p/ in "più" is lengthened.



> Standard Italian is essentially based upon Tuscan and it is not weird at all that a Northern Italian may be puzzled to hear these forms, because they don't even apply the Raddoppiamento fonosintattico properly.



Thing is, I'm not questioning the rules or the use of the _raddoppiamento fonosintattico_. I was trying to address the lengthened pronunciation of /p/ in "più" as an isolated word.


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## Pietruzzo

TheCrociato91 said:


> I don't question "piano" as in "più *piano*" being pronounced /piu*pp*iàno/,


 My transcription was "/*ppiu*ppiàno/. That's how I hear it and that's how I say it. I won't question it could be different elsewhere.


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## TheCrociato91

Pietruzzo said:


> My transcription was "/*ppiu*ppiàno/.



I know. However, since I was only considering the word "piano" (when pronounced right after the word "più"), I wanted to place emphasis on the gemination I agreed with: /..u*pp*iàno/. 



Pietruzzo said:


> That's how I hear it and that's how I say it. I won't question it could be different elsewhere.



So what you're saying is that you hear the /p/ sound in "più" (and not only in "piano") as lengthened. My question still stands: would you say that you'd perceive an audible difference if one were to pronounce /piuppiàno/ in lieu of /ppiuppiàno/? What myself and @berndf are trying to figure out is whether one can actually pronounce a lengthened /p:/ at the beginning of a sentence so that one can actually tell it apart from a short /p/. Since I don't pronounce a long /p:/ in "più" (but I _may _geminate the /p/ in "piano" when it's followed by "più"), I can't explain if such a difference could be detected.


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## Olaszinhok

Yes, of course...
Ppiù is extremely easy to pronounce for me, I may double the initial p when I want to emphisise something. _Ppiù grande? Davvero? Is it bigger? Really?_


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## berndf

Olaszinhok said:


> Ppiù is extremely easy to pronounce for me,


You still haven't given us the slightest clue *how* you would do that. In phonetics, _pp_ has no definition at the beginning of an utterances.

The definition of the difference between _p_ and _pp_ is a prolonged interval between closure and release but at the beginning of an utterance the closure is not part of the utterance and hence the concept of an interval between closure and release is not defined.


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## Olaszinhok

I can only tell you that _*p*_iù and *pp*iù are different for me, the former is a simple consonant and the latter is a geminate consonant. Apart from this, I cannot give you any clue, I am sorry.


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## berndf

Well that is most unfortunate. But anyway this _ppiù_ thing is not what the OP has been asking. We all agree that this gemination expresses emphasis but the question was about phonemic gemination, i.e. gemination that is important in distinguishing words, like _ano_ and _anno_.


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## Pietruzzo

berndf said:


> Well that is most unfortunate. But anyway this _ppiù_ thing is iunot what the OP has been asking. We all agree that this gemination expresses emphasis but the question was about phonemic gemination, i.e. gemination that is important in distinguishing words, like _ano_ and _anno_.


In salentino dialect there are many words that are distinguished with the gemination of he first consonant
Ppunta (fix- imperative)- punta  (sharp point)
Ssire (to come out) - Sire (father)
Ccodda (picked)- coddra (glue)
Ppende (hangs up) pende(it's leaning).
I'd say using doubled consonants as first letters is commonplace. Of course all of them can be used at the beginning of a sentence.
For those who are interested in the matter and can read Italian this is a link to a document issued by Università del Salento. The chapter that deals with our topic is 2.5.


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## Swatters

The article Pietruzzo linked to has a spectrogram for a few utterance initial geminates, but sadly they're for /l/ and /s/, both continuants and thus expected to be able to show length distinctions after a pause.

Japanese has a few interjections written with a word initial geminate stop, but while i have heard them realised in a way that differs from a plain initial stop, the forvo realisations of those words don't:

ってば

ったく

For what it's worth I occasionally have have an initial /tt/ in French resulting from vowel deletion, but my actual realisation seems to be a strongly fortis [tʰ].


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## sumelic

Swiss German is supposed to have a phonemic contrast between word-initial long and short consonants (only for stops). In utterance-initial position, they are distinguished in production by speakers, but listeners cannot perceive the difference. It also seems that they cannot be distinguished perceptually in phrase-medial position after an obstruent: http://www.ling-phil.ox.ac.uk/files/duration_differences_artic.pdf

So the gemination is "present" utterance-initially in one sense, even if it cannot be heard.


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## Ben Jamin

Polish has a phonetic curiosity. The genetive of the word deszcz /deʃt͡ʃ / (meaning _rain_) was once pronunced dżdżu /d͡ʒd͡ʒu/, that is with a geminated stop. There is also an adjective dżdżysty (rainy) pronounced /d͡ʒd͡ʒɨstɨ/. Both words are now obsolete, but were occasionally used in the XX century, especially in literature.

I forgot to add that there is still another word beginning with the same cluster: dżdżownica (earthworm), the Polish word means literally "rainworm". This word is not obsolete and widely used.


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## Ben Jamin

ilocas2 said:


> Polish has some words starting with *ss-*. *Ssać* (to suck) and derivatives. According to the pronunciation written on Wiktionary, they are pronounced with long *s*.


There is also the word *zzuć *(to take off one's shoes), and the preposition *zza* (from behind)*.*


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## Pietruzzo

Swatters said:


> The article Pietruzzo linked to has a spectrogram for a few utterance initial geminates, but sadly they're for /l/ and /s/,


Just to be precise, they're /l/ and /tʃ/:
Lenta - llenta
Cinca /tʃinka/ - ccinca /ttʃinka/.


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## berndf

sumelic said:


> In utterance-initial position, they are distinguished in production by speakers, but listeners cannot perceive the difference.


Interesting. Which means they cannot be phonemic, right?


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## Sobakus

One can't talk about a phoneme's non-phonemicity in some particular position because of perceptory difficulties, not only because it's a non-sequitur, but also because phonemes (and speech sounds in general) aren't defined on the basis of auditory distinctions but on the basis of their articulation. At best you can talk about allophony, but not in this case: while geminate voiceless stops are very difficult (but not altogether impossible) to tell from normal ones at the start of the utterance, they're still articulated as geminate, and all other geminate sounds are perfectly audible. For the language to treat voiceless geminate stops in some particular position differently from all other sounds would be adding extra unnecessary rules. Articulating them like all other geminate sounds in the same position is linguistically more economical.

In Russian, an initial geminate /kk/ happens regularly when the preposition К precedes a word starting with another К, and the only difference in its articulation from an initial geminate /gg/ - which happens when the second word starts with Г and is perfectly distinguishable from a single /g/ - is voicing. If you really need to make an initial /kk/ audible, you can slightly prevoice it. The difference in the length of the pause is also audible as is after another stop.


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## berndf

Sobakus said:


> phonemes (and speech sounds in general) aren't defined on the basis of auditory distinctions but on the basis of their articulation


Is that so? In my understanding it is exactly the other way round. Phonemes can _only_ be defined on the basis of their perpetual distinguishability. That is one of the fundamental differences between phones and phonemes.


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> Is that so? In my understanding it is exactly the other way round. Phonemes can _only_ be defined on the basis of their perpetual distinguishability. That is one of the fundamental differences between phones and phonemes.


I think here we have a very clear example of why this is incorrect: the sounds are close to perceptually indistinguishable, but produced differently, being different phonemes - and phones - in the speaker's mind. As soon as they stop being so, actual allophony arises and you can talk about different phonemes represented by the same phone.


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## berndf

Sobakus said:


> I think here we have a very clear example of why this is incorrect: the sounds are close to perceptually indistinguishable, but produced differently, being different phonemes - and phones - in the speaker's mind. As soon as they stop being so, actual allophony arises and you can talk about different phonemes represented by the same phone.


If the distinctions exist only in the speaker's mind they couldn't be transmitted. What we have here is a group of speakers who say they don't know how they actually realize these phonemes in these situations. If there is no perceptual differentiation, the mentioned minimal pairs couldn't be resolved in communication. We should first find out if and how they are resolved. If they aren't then I wouldn't see any justification in speaking of phonemicity.


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> If the distinctions exist only in the speaker's mind they couldn't be transmitted. What we have here is a group of speakers who say they don't know how they actually realize these phonemes in these situations. If there is no perceptual differentiation, the mentioned minimal pairs couldn't be resolved in communication. We should first find out if and how they are resolved. If they aren't then I wouldn't see any justification in speaking of phonemicity.


It's surprising to me that it should be less than crystal clear to anyone how exactly those are realised. As I said already, they're realised identically to how all other geminate consonants are realised in the same position - and to how they themselves are realised when in any other position - by postponing their release. To argue that one can't postpone the release of a phrase-initial consonant is to argue that the speakers' default tongue position is constantly in closure for that particular consonant.


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## elroy

Palestinian Arabic has phonemic word-initial geminates.  For example:

bbalāš: for free
balāš: lest

ṭawwar: developed (transitive)
ṭṭawwar: developed (intransitive)

jabal: mountain
jjabal: the mountain

The difference is clearly perceived by native speakers.


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## berndf

elroy said:


> The difference is clearly perceived by native speakers.


Can you explain how (in case of voiceless stops)?


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## Red Arrow

I read somewhere (on duolingo.com, I think, so not very trustworthy) that geminated stops are almost like a normal stop preceded by a glottal stop.

In that case, ppiù would be /ʔpiu/ in certain Italian dialects.


Ben Jamin said:


> Polish has a phonetic curiosity. The genetive of the word deszcz /deʃt͡ʃ / (meaning _rain_) was once pronunced dżdżu /d͡ʒd͡ʒu/, that is with a geminated stop. There is also an adjective dżdżysty (rainy) pronounced /d͡ʒd͡ʒɨstɨ/. Both words are now obsolete, but were occasionally used in the XX century, especially in literature.
> 
> I forgot to add that there is still another word beginning with the same cluster: dżdżownica (earthworm), the Polish word means literally "rainworm". This word is not obsolete and widely used.


I wouldn't call it a geminated stop. It is just an affricate followed by another one. /d͡ʒd͡ʒ/ Quite easy to pronounce, actually.


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## apmoy70

Red Arrow :D said:


> I read somewhere (on duolingo.com, I think, so not very trustworthy) that geminated stops are almost like a normal stop preceded by a glottal stop.
> 
> In that case, ppiù would be /ʔpiu/ in certain Italian dialects.
> 
> ...


That's what I also perceive when I listen to a Rhodian or Kalymnian saying  *«ππέφτω» *or *«ππηδώ»*.
I also hear aspiration, something like [ʔpʰiˈðo]


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## Ben Jamin

Red Arrow :D said:


> I read somewhere (on duolingo.com, I think, so not very trustworthy) that geminated stops are almost like a normal stop preceded by a glottal stop.
> 
> In that case, ppiù would be /ʔpiu/ in certain Italian dialects.
> 
> I wouldn't call it a geminated stop. It is just an affricate followed by another one. /d͡ʒd͡ʒ/ Quite easy to pronounce, actually.


Polish "affricates" are very much like stops. You can hear only one phase. The Polish clusters like in drzwi (dʒvi) or trzeba, are genuine affricates.


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## jimquk

berndf said:


> If the distinctions exist only in the speaker's mind they couldn't be transmitted. What we have here is a group of speakers who say they don't know how they actually realize these phonemes in these situations. If there is no perceptual differentiation, the mentioned minimal pairs couldn't be resolved in communication. We should first find out if and how they are resolved. If they aren't then I wouldn't see any justification in speaking of phonemicity.



I'm curious. If any particular sound distinction is generally imperceptible, how would children naturally learn to reproduce that distinction? I could see that possibly when there's a prefix plus word, where the morpheme boundary regularly results in a gemination, the speaker is aware that there "ought" to be a gemination even if its production for certain sounds is imperceptible to a hearer. But I can't understand how a genuinely phonemic distinction can be regularly produced, but imperceptibly, and still learnt by children.


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## Ben Jamin

jimquk said:


> I'm curious. If any particular sound distinction is generally imperceptible, how would children naturally learn to reproduce that distinction? I could see that possibly when there's a prefix plus word, where the morpheme boundary regularly results in a gemination, the speaker is aware that there "ought" to be a gemination even if its production for certain sounds is imperceptible to a hearer. But I can't understand how a genuinely phonemic distinction can be regularly produced, but imperceptibly, and still learnt by children.


Both the quoted text and the reply say basically the same. What was the aim of this reply?


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## fdb

jimquk said:


> But I can't understand how a genuinely phonemic distinction can be regularly produced, but imperceptibly, and still learnt by children.



That is a good point.


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## Sobakus

jimquk said:


> I'm curious. If any particular sound distinction is generally imperceptible, how would children naturally learn to reproduce that distinction? I could see that possibly when there's a prefix plus word, where the morpheme boundary regularly results in a gemination, the speaker is aware that there "ought" to be a gemination even if its production for certain sounds is imperceptible to a hearer. But I can't understand how a genuinely phonemic distinction can be regularly produced, but imperceptibly, and still learnt by children.


It's pretty straightforward: the word _più_ doesn't only occur phrase-initially but in every other position as well. Children learn the word with the double consonant because phrase-initial is not the only position they can hear it in, and from all the other more easily discernible phrase-initial double consonants they learn the rule (perhaps better defined as lack of any special rule) that all double consonants phrase-initially behave no differently from any other position. No rule arises or needs to arise that would define phrase-initial voiceless plosives as exceptions to this general rule (or lack thereof), not in the least because in conversations, phrase-initial doesn't mean that a complete silence precedes it.

Italians in particular aren't exactly famous for calmly waiting for their turn to reply - no offence meant


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