# geminate consonants in North Germanic languages



## Nino83

Hello everyone. 

I read here that in Swedish both vowels and consonants (for example, p, t, k, b, d, g, l, r, s) are short or long and the difference, in production, between short and long consonants is far beyond the JND (just noticeable difference). 

Here it is said that the same happens in Norwegian (Bokmål), while in Icelandic, geminate voiceless stops (p, t, k) have preaspiration while geminate voiced stops (b, d, g) are pronounced [pp tt kk]. In Icelandic there's no a true opposition between short and long vowels (not phonemic) but lenght depends on enviroment, as in Italian (long vowels in open syllables and short vowels in closed ones). 

The first question is: how is the situation in Danish? According to the second link there is no certainty (some say that /ikke/ is pronounced with a [g] and other with a [k]). 

Second question: are Nordic Germanic languages and Italian the only ones which retained geminate consonants among Indo-European languages? (I mean phonemic opposition between single and double consonants, i.e minimal pairs). 

Thank you


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## ahvalj

Concerning your second question. The Italian and Scandinavian geminates are largely products of the development in these languages: in both Latin and Common Germanic the geminates were much less abundant, and the deeper we go towards the IE the lesser geminates can be reconstructed. In particular, most Germanic geminates are products of assimilation of C+_n_ and _H_+_j/w_, whereas most Latin ones appear on the prefix-root boundaries and as a result of assimilation of consonants in vicinity of sonants; both branches also have *_tt_>_ss_ and used geminates in the end of roots in some expressive words (Latin _atta, acca, gibber_).


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## ahvalj

The geminates are also preserved in several Indic languages (where, again, they are mostly products of middle-Indic assimilations): Punjabi (130 million of speakers), Lahnda (18,5 million), Sindhi (25 million) and Gojri (1 million).


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## Nino83

Thank you, ahvalj. 
About the first question, listening on forvo.com, it seems that in Danish, intervocalic voiceless geminate consonants are pronounced with a single voiced consonant. 
Could the precence of geminate consonants be one of the reasons why Italian and Icelandic lost phonemic difference between long and short vowels (but also most Slavic languages don't have it, so it seems to be an independent developement).


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## ahvalj

Nino83 said:


> Could the precence of geminate consonants be one of the reasons why Italian and Icelandic lost phonemic difference between long and short vowels (but also most Slavic languages don't have it, so it seems to be an independent developement).


This is a complex question with many particularities across languages, so I think it is impossible to generalize. The vowel length was lost already in post-classical Latin, so that no Romance language inherited the ancient vowel lengths. In Slavic, the vowel lengths existed at the time of the earliest texts (9–10th centuries), when the old consonant lengths were already lost, and the subsequent loss of vowel lengths in a half of Slavic languages didn't introduce the phonemic consonant length (all the double consonants in the modern Slavic exist at the morpheme boundaries and are younger than the oldest Slavic written records). In the modern Greek, Baltic, Armenian and in many Iranic languages both the vowel and consonant lengths are lost. In Celtic the old consonant lengths served the basis for the development of the lenition system; something similar occurred in the middle-Indic and in the western Romance (_aqua>agua, bucca>boca; rota>rueda, gattus>gato_).


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## ahvalj

An update to my previous post: the Baltic languages of course preserve the vowel lengths.


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## Ben Jamin

In Polish geminate consonants exist, but they are few (in practice only nn and kk in native and assmilated loans) but they are phonemic and form minimal pairs: leki (medicines) lekki (light/not heavy), rany (wounds) and ranny (wounded person). There is no oposition between long and short vowels, length reflects emotional expression: tak (yes) taak? (are you serious saying yes?).


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## fdb

Persian has long consonants both in native and in Arabic words, though I think they are phonologically distinctive only in Arabic loan words.


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## Sepia

Nino83 said:


> Hello everyone.
> 
> ...
> 
> The first question is: how is the situation in Danish? According to the second link there is no certainty (some say that /ikke/ is pronounced with a [g] and other with a [k]).
> 
> ...
> 
> Thank you




I cannot really imagine how there should be any noticable difference in the length of a consonant. In the intensity, yes, not in the length. But maybe I just have not noticed. Can you give an example?

And about the pronunciation of "ikke": Yes true, you may hear both, a distinct "k" and a "hard g". But they are not a far cry from each other. It begins with a short vowel because of the double consonants, of course. 

I am not sure what one has to do with the other.


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## Nino83

Thank you, Sepia, for your reply. 



Sepia said:


> I cannot really imagine how there should be any noticable difference in the length of a consonant. In the intensity, yes, not in the length. But maybe I just have not noticed. Can you give an example?



The "intensity" you perceive is related to the length of the consonant (geminate consonants are longer than single ones). 

Listen  caro  (said by Paolo_B) and  carro  (said by ALaNTuSeK). 
As you can hear, the double "rr" is longer.


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## berndf

Sepia said:


> I cannot really imagine how there should be any noticable difference in the length of a consonant. In the intensity, yes, not in the length. But maybe I just have not noticed.


Do you mean in Danish or in general? In general, there or quite a few languages with phonemic consonant length, just as vowel lengths. In languages that have a phonemic consonant length, long variants usually only exist for a subset of consonants. In Biblical Hebew, e.g., laryngeals and /r/ cannot be lengthened.



Sepia said:


> Can you give an example?


Italian:_
Due anni_ (long /n:/) _= two years
Due ani_ (short /n/) _= two assholes.
_
Bavarian:
_A woasa mo _(short unvoiced /s/) = _a wise man_.
_A woassa mo _(long unvoiced /s:/) = _a white man_.

EDIT: Crossed with Nino.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> In general, there or quite a few languages with phonemic consonant length


I would say the situation changes with time. For example, consonant length was almost absent in Common Germanic (though it had such exotic long semivowels as _ı̯ı̯_ and _u̯u̯_) and was still almost non-existend in Gothic, but in the second half of the 1st millennium all the remaining Germanic languages acquired long equivalents of most consonants. This has preserved in Swedish, Norwegian, partly in Faroese and Icelandic (and dialectally in German), but was lost again elsewhere. The same was true for Celtic, which at some point had an opposition of consonant length that served one of the sources of the lenition system. The consonant length was present in Latin, in Greek, etc. Such things come and go with time.


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## luitzen

This also exist in spoken West Frisian. For example the sentence _Kommme? _is nonsensical when it is pronounced as _Komme? _The difference in pronounciation is not noticeable to Dutch people, but to Frisians, it is quite a big difference.

Kommme? (or should I write Kom' 'me?, there's not really an official spelling for phenomena that only exist in spoken language) is shortened from _Komme jimme?_ and means _Are you guys coming?
komme _is the name form of the infinitive of _komme_ as well as the present plural forms.

Another example is the difference between _komm_(from kommen, the goal form of the infinitive of komme) and _kom _(the imperative and the pirst person singular in the present).

A third example is the difference between _man_ (man) and _mann _(from mannen, meaning men).

So in general, in spoken West Frisian, phonemic long consonants occur and form minimal pairs when the stem of a verb or a noun ends with _m, n, _or, _ng. _It is not represented in the written language.


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## ahvalj

From your description, they seem to be new, the second element coming from the assimilated morpheme: _-me<jimme_, -_m<-en_ and_ -n<-en_. This may exist in German as well: an Austrian colleague explained me the particularities of his Graz dialect and, if I recall correctly, mentioned the form _gemma_ < _gehen wir_.


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## Gavril

Nino83 said:


> Second question: are Nordic Germanic languages and Italian the only ones which retained geminate consonants among Indo-European languages?



Armenian has the occasional geminate, but it seems unlikely that most of them are "retentions"; I would guess that most (if not all) are the result of assimilation or syllable contraction.

Some examples are ի*նն*սուն [innə'sun] "ninety", ու*ղղ*ել [uɣɣ'el] "to point (at something)", ք*նն*ութիւն [kənnu'tjun] "examination".


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> From your description, they seem to be new, the second element coming from the assimilated morpheme: _-me<jimme_, -_m<-en_ and_ -n<-en_. This may exist in German as well: an Austrian colleague explained me the particularities of his Graz dialect and, if I recall correctly, mentioned the form _gemma_ < _gehen wir_.


This is quite common in German, e.g. the fusion of _i*m M*eer_ (_in the sea_) to [ɪ*mː*eːɐ] or the Schwa elision in the accusative masculine indefinite article _ei*nen* _[aɪ*nː*].

This is not particularly Austrian. Austrian/Bavarian has actually remnants of "true" long consonants that are not artefacts of elisions or contractions. E.g. the minimal pair _der wei*s*e Mann_ and _der wei*ß*e Mann_ are distinguished by length of the /s/ (short in _weise _and long in _weiße_).


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## luitzen

ahvalj said:


> From your description, they seem to be new, the second element coming from the assimilated morpheme: _-me<jimme_, -_m<-en_ and_ -n<-en_. This may exist in German as well: an Austrian colleague explained me the particularities of his Graz dialect and, if I recall correctly, mentioned the form _gemma_ < _gehen wir_.


I suspect it's also quite common in Low German, especially since there's no written standard.

I also found a fourth case of long consonants: _Dommmei? _(Dogge jimme mei?, literally: Are you guys doing along?, Are you guys in?/Are you guys joining?).

This way I can even get a consonant that is three times as long, compared to a single consonant: _Kommmmei? _(Are you guys coming along?, from _Komme jimme mei?_)
Much longer doesn't really seem possible. If I try to shorten _Komme jimme mei my mei?_ (Are you guys coming along with me?) I don't get further then _Kommmmei mmei?_ and then I'm really stretching it.


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## berndf

luitzen said:


> I suspect it's also quite common in Low German, especially since there's no written standard.


It is common in any version of colloquial German.


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