# Bulgarian: voicing/devoicing before н, м, л etc.



## Psi-Lord

What exactly is the situation of voicing / devoicing consonants before _л_, _н_, _м_ and _р_, and before vowels across word borders? None of my (few, true) materials is very precise about it. For instance, is _в Африка_ pronounced [v ˈafrikə] or [f ˈafrikə], _от Рим_ [ot ˈrim] or [od ˈrim]?


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## DarkChild

I really can't help you with that. I don't know of a rule. But the above examples are pronounced "f afrika" and "ot rim". I thing in general the preposition в is pronounced as ф. От is pronounced with no change. I thing only before з it becomes од.


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## Psi-Lord

Oh, so there’s no ‘general, set rule’? How surprising!  That might explain why one of the texts I read (God knows which right now) had e.g. _f Afrika_ but _iz Afrika_ (not sure about this one, but it was definitely a preposition with a voiced consonant in the end) as pronunciation transcriptions. I thought that one of them had to be a typo, and should be either _v Afrika_ or _is Afrika_.


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## Kanes

No rule, but I think we tend to chose the sound with flatter pronunciation, that merges with the word easier_. Iz Afrika_ means through/around Afrika, also could mean from Africa.


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## Ærie Descent

The only rules of voicing/devoicing consonants are the following:

- Every voiced consonant in the end of the word is pronounced as its corresponding voiceless consonant. For example: _гра*д* -> (гра*т*)_.

- Assimilation (асимилация / уподобяване). It can occur inside the word or between 2 neighbour words. What happens here is, when there are 2 consonants of different types (a voiced and a voiceless one) one next to another, the one on the left is pronounced as its counterpart, accordingly to what the one on the right is... I didn't understand that myself so I'll give an example.
In the word _ра*зк*азвам_, з and к are one next to the other. The one on the left (з) is a voiced consonant and the one on the right (к) is a voiceless consonant. According to the assimilation rule, *з* should become its voiceless counterpart, which is *с*, so the word is pronounced _ра*ск*азвам_
It also works the other way around - in the word _о*тг*овор_ the voiceless consonant (т) is pronounced as its voiced counterpart because the (г) to the right is voiced. The word is pronounced _о*дг*овор_. 
Assimilation can occur between words, for example _пре*д т*еб_ (_пре*т т*еп_). See the previous rule for the red п.

- When there are 3 consonants one next to another in the middle of a word, if the middle one is _т, д_ or _к_ it gets dropped off. E.g. _радо*стн*о -> радо*сн*о.
When there are 2 consonants in the end of the word, if the second one is т, д or к it gets dropped off again. E.g. радо*ст* -> радо*с*.

There is just one special thing about л, м, р and н - they're the only sonorous consonants in Bulgarian language and they have no voiceless counterparts._


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## Ærie Descent

Psi-Lord said:


> Oh, so there’s no ‘general, set rule’? How surprising!  That might explain why one of the texts I read (God knows which right now) had e.g. _f Afrika_ but _iz Afrika_ (not sure about this one, but it was definitely a preposition with a voiced consonant in the end) as pronunciation transcriptions. I thought that one of them had to be a typo, and should be either _v Afrika_ or _is Afrika_.



_*ф* Африка_ is as wrong as it gets, it's only correct to write _*в*_ Африка if you mean "_*in* Africa_"


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## DarkChild

Ærie Descent said:


> _*ф* Африка_ is as wrong as it gets, it's only correct to say _*в*_ Африка if you mean "_*in* Africa_"


Nobody pronounces it that way. It is always pronounced ф африка.


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## Ærie Descent

I thought it was about writing it, not pronouncing it. My bad, I'm sorry.


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## Psi-Lord

Having studied some basics of Russian and wee bits of Polish in the past, I was familiar with voicing and devoicing in consonant combinations (within words or across word borders), and the general devoicing in the end of words (either alone or by the end of sentences), so Bulgarian was no mystery in this respect (Serbian, on the other hand, gave me a hard time, because I tended to easily unvoice final voiced consonants… ). The only surprise I can think of was learning that В had no influence in this (de)voicing game, because of its ancient past as a semivowel – or at least that’s what I was told, that words such as _творец_ and _дворец_ do not sound the same.

I also knew that Л, М, Н and Р had no voiceless counterpart, and learnt that, within a word, they didn’t affect the pronunciation of a previous consonant either (that is, a pair such as _смей_ and _змей_ does not sound the same either).

The one question I couldn’t basically find an answer to was – if a word ends in a voiced consonant (C1) and the following word begins with a vowel (V) or a sonorant (C2), what happens to C1? Does it become voiceless, or does it keep its voicing?

Now, after asking this question around, I have the feeling that the answer may not be as simple as I thought. A friend of mine from Burgas, for instance, also said he pronounces _в Африка_ as /ф Африка/, but that he thinks he pronounces _из Африка_ the way it’s spelt, and not /ис Африка/, as I expected. 

Then, to confuse things even more, Katarina Bontcheva, in her _Elementary On-Line Bulgarian Grammar_, says, in the section ‘Basic Rules of Pronunciation’, that:



			
				Katarina Bontcheva said:
			
		

> The vowels, and the consonants that do not participate in the opposition voiced : voiceless (i.e. м, н, р, л, й), as well as the consonant В do not influence the voicing of the neighbouring consonants.



And her first example is _пред олтара_, which she says is pronounced /пред олтара/, not /прет олтара/. 



Ærie Descent said:


> - When there are 3 consonants one next to another in the middle of a word, if the middle one is _т, д_ or _к_ it gets dropped off. E.g. _радо*стн*о -> радо*сн*о.
> When there are 2 consonants in the end of the word, if the second one is т, д or к it gets dropped off again. E.g. радо*ст* -> радо*с*._


_
Oh, that I did not know! Very interesting, thank you for pointing that! _


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## DarkChild

Psi-Lord said:


> The one question I couldn’t basically find an answer to was – if a word ends in a voiced consonant (C1) and the following word begins with a vowel (V) or a sonorant (C2), what happens to C1? Does it become voiceless, or does it keep its voicing?
> 
> Now, after asking this question around, I have the feeling that the answer may not be as simple as I thought. A friend of mine from Burgas, for instance, also said he pronounces _в Африка_ as /ф Африка/, but that he thinks he pronounces _из Африка_ the way it’s spelt, and not /ис Африка/, as I expected.
> 
> And her first example is _пред олтара_, which she says is pronounced /пред олтара/, not /прет олтара/.


Your friend is right with his examples and so is the example in the book. I think a voiced consonant stays voiced before a sonorous consonant and varies (it can be voiced or devoiced depending on word) before a vowel. I'm trying to pronounce example to myself and see which sounds better but after a few, they all seem fine to me lol In reality we never learned such rules in school.


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## Psi-Lord

DarkChild said:


> I'm trying to pronounce example to myself and see which sounds better but after a few, they all seem fine to me lol


This topic seems to be one of those where, the more you dig, the uglier it gets. LOL

I tried looking for papers on the topic using Google today, but one I found dealing more specifically with the topic just made things worse. It’s a paper by Russell G. Schuh called _The Feature [voice] and Boundaries in Bulgarian_.

According to the paper, the final consonant of a word is always devoiced, and then, depending on the sound that follows, it remains as such or gets revoiced, so to speak. Sonorants, the letter В and vowels do not affect the initial devoicing:

1. град /грат/
1a. град Атина /грат атинъ/
1b. град Венеция /грат венецийъ/
1c. град Рим /грат рим/
1d. град Бургас /град бургас/

However, still according to the paper, prepositions, being clitics, behave like prefixes, that is, as if there is no boundary between them and the word that follows, which makes (de)voicing work just the way it does within a single word. The examples given are:


с болка /з болкъ/
с ноти /с ноти/
в София /ф софийъ/
в една кантора /в една кънторъ/

But, since everyone so far agree that the preposition _в_ remained voiceless before _Африка_, I fail to see where the catch is. 

Phew! And, when, years ago, I’d tell a Bulgarian acquaintance that Bulgarian seemed to be pretty difficult, he’d respond I should only worry about verbs. Yeah, right! LOL


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## DarkChild

I think this is one of those issues where rules and explanations don't really help. Only listening and getting a feel for this is going to help. In addition, when you start speaking a new language, you will always have an accent, so this should be your last worry.


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## Ærie Descent

Psi-Lord said:


> This topic seems to be one of those where, the more you dig, the uglier it gets. LOL
> 
> I tried looking for papers on the topic using Google today, but one I found dealing more specifically with the topic just made things worse. It’s a paper by Russell G. Schuh called _The Feature [voice] and Boundaries in Bulgarian_.
> 
> According to the paper, the final consonant of a word is always devoiced, and then, depending on the sound that follows, it remains as such or gets revoiced, so to speak. Sonorants, the letter В and vowels do not affect the initial devoicing:
> 
> 1. град /грат/
> 1a. град Атина /грат атинъ/
> 1b. град Венеция /грат венецийъ/
> 1c. град Рим /грат рим/
> 1d. град Бургас /град бургас/
> 
> However, still according to the paper, prepositions, being clitics, behave like prefixes, that is, as if there is no boundary between them and the word that follows, which makes (de)voicing work just the way it does within a single word. The examples given are:
> 
> 
> с болка /з болкъ/
> с ноти /с ноти/
> в София /ф софийъ/
> в една кантора /в една кънторъ/



Basically what I spent half an hour trying to explain in my previous post...
Trust my B+ in Bulgarian philology, got it in the best philological university in BG


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## Psi-Lord

Ærie Descent said:


> Basically what I spent half an hour trying to explain in my previous post...
> Trust my B+ in Bulgarian philology, got it in the best philological university in BG


Hah, sorry – I did not mean to ‘imply’ I doubted you!  After all, I wouldn’t even be in a position to, hehe.

I was just both summarising what the paper I found had (in order to show why its final conclusion got me confused), and pointing out until which point it did follow what you guys said and from which it differed – which was basically that everyone agreed on /ф африкъ/, but the paper suddenly threw a /в една кънторъ/ in, extending the reasoning behind it to all prepositions.


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## DarkChild

Psi-Lord said:


> Hah, sorry – I did not mean to ‘imply’ I doubted you!  After all, I wouldn’t even be in a position to, hehe.
> 
> I was just both summarising what the paper I found had (in order to show why its final conclusion got me confused), and pointing out until which point it did follow what you guys said and from which it differed – which was basically that everyone agreed on /ф африкъ/, but the paper suddenly threw a */в една кънторъ/* in, extending the reasoning behind it to all prepositions.



That's definitely wrong. No one says it that way no matter what that article may say. It's either ф една or въф една.


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## Ærie Descent

Me and my colleagues gave it a thought today and came to the conclusion that the з doesn't get devoiced because it's between 2 vowels and it's easier not to devoice it while pronouncing it and във (във Африка, which is gramatically incorrect but works as an example) is an exception cause ъ is a weird letter, lol.


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