# consonant cluster



## cheshire

Georgian: *msxv*e*rpls (meaning "sacrifice")*


Czech: *Vlt*ava ​
Serbo-Croatian Language: *srpsk*ohrva*tsk*i jezik​Could you show me words with such long strings of consonant letters in one word?


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## Jana337

cheshire said:


> Georgian:  *msxv*e*rpls *- ???
> Czech: *Vlt*ava - a river that passes through Praha
> Serbia-Croatian: *srpsk*ohrva*tsk*i jezik - Serbo-Croatian language​Could you show me words with such long strings of consonant letters in one word?


Can we also give meanings, please? 

Some more Czech examples (I wouldn't really bother with clusters of just 3 consonants - in particular if they are two syllables, like in Vltava - because it would be a loooooooooong list):
čtvrt - a quarter (1/4)
čtvrť - a quarter (district)
čtvrtletí - a quarter (calendar)
rozčtvrtit - to divide in quarter
čtvrtek - Thursday
strč - put (imperative)
prst - finger
skrz - through
krk - neck
The last two combine into a tongue-twister whereby we torture poor foreigners: Strč prst skrz krk. It is a meaningful sentence (Stick your finger through your throat) although hardly useful.


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## Mutichou

Could you explain how you can pronounce words with no vowels? I'm also curious about Georgian words.
In French, like in English, there are no long consonant clusters. The longest I can think of is "_e*xpl*iquer_" (explain).
In German, there can be four or five consonants in compounded words: _Ku*nstl*ehrer_ (art teacher), _He*rbstf*erien_ (autumn holiday – although
 R is not really a consonant here).


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## Jana337

Mutichou said:


> Could you explain how you can pronounce words with no vowels?


Essentially, R and L can function as vowels. 
Pronunciation of strč prst skrz krk.

One more: 
scvrnkl- pinged off a surface 
"Scvrnkls" also exists but I do not have a pronunciation file for it.

For tourists:
zmrzlina - ice-cream

By the way, here's a related thread (words without vowels).


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## cheshire

Is this one of those threads where Slavic people become lively?

One common aspect is they "nearly all" seem to have one "L" or "R" in a string of consonants.

spring
splash
strike


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## Arrius

The *Sixth Form* /siksthfawm/(top class in a grammar school) poses some problems even for a native speaker and often ends up as _the six form_. Maybe child's play for the Serbs, but just let others try it.
Arabic avoids treble and sometimes even double consonants but there are still some daunting consonant clusters that require bucal gymnastics such as in *نطق* /nutq/ (according to the spelling the t sound ought to be an emphatic T *ط* not the ordinary t *ت* , but it seems that not even the Arabs can manage that immediately before the q deep in the throat). Perhaps it is not surprising that the word means _speech or pronunciation. _
Then there is this charming and evocative line from Heine's "Deutschland: ein Wintermärchen" that might prove good pronunciation practice for apprentice germanists:
"*Es jauchzen die Würstchen im spritzenden Fett*" (The sausages rejoice in the spluttering fat). Makes my mouth water - pass the Löwensenf!


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## Jana337

cheshire said:


> Is this one of those threads where Slavic people become lively?


Touché. 


> One common aspect is they "nearly all" seem to have one "L" or "R" in a string of consonants.
> 
> spring
> splash
> strike


Well, these are quite mundane.  You'd have to besiege R or L by consonants from both sides to impress me.


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## Arrius

PS 
Originally Posted by *Mutichou* 
Could you explain how you can pronounce words with no vowels?

The champions of "vowel-lessness" must be the Moroccans who accomplish some incredible feats of this kind in their version of Arabic. Perhaps a native speaker or cognoscento would be kind enough to give some examples more impressive than _ktab_ or _fnaa._

_By the way, the antithesis of the Moroccans in this matter are the Bantu of Southern Africa, who so much resist consonant clusters that the term *bottle store* (off licence in the UK, liquor store in the States) becomes __*Botilo Sitilo* (no kidding) which is actually written on the sign over the shop._


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## Lugubert

Perhaps a Caucasian language will beat my examples, but Swedish _pu*nschskv*ätt_ 'a splash of a punch' will rank fairly high. Phonetically, it's not that bad, because the -sch- is a single -sh- sound. It is not in any way a made up word, and could be used today perfectly unflichingly.

A word in which all consonants are pronounced, is _lä*rftskr*amhandel_ 'haberdashery', which gets some Ghits referring to the late 19th century, but would have to be explained to younger people.

For the opposite phenomenon, I love Italian _cuoiaio_ 'leather goods shop', and I challenge any language to beat the Swedish dialect sentence _Å i åa ä e ö._ - just vowels, meaning 'And in the creek, there is an island".


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## Whodunit

Here's an article about consonant clusters with some interesting languages (Georgian is on top --> eight consonants in a row; Maori doesn't allow two or more consonants in a row).

As for German, I can't think of bigger consonant clusters than five in single words (but inflected!):

du ma*mpfst* (you're munchin)
du i*mpfst* (you're vaccinating)

For compound words, it is easy to find five-consonant words:

Na*chtstr*om (off-peak electricity)
Plu*mpskl*o (outhouse; privy)
He*rbstzw*eig (not very common: autumn branch)*

In colloquial speech, vowels are often omitted. In our dialect, we'd say:

*D's b'k*omm'chhin*.* (Das bekomme ich hin = I'll manage that) - _but this is not one word_
Glau*bnskr*iek (Glaubenskrieg = religious war)

*if the "r" counts, it would be 7 consonants in one row: [he6bsttsvaIg]


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## HKK

Dutch should not be forgotten in this thread!

herfstschrijn: autumn shrine
angstschreeuw:  "scream of fear" 

Both 8 consonants in a row, though ch is actually one sound.


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## Alxmrphi

English only really has "rhythm", makes life easier


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## Whodunit

Alex_Murphy said:


> English only really has "rhythm", makes life easier


 
"y" should not count as a consonant here, otherwise we could also _sphinx_, _lynch_ etc.


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## Ander

I don't believe in words with only consonants.

They may be written as such, but in pronunciation I am convinced that a neutral vowel (a schwa) is inserted among the consonants.


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## Whodunit

It is possible. Just take the Czech word _krk_. I can easily pronounce it with any kind of "r" one can think of.


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## Ander

My only problem with those "consonant" words is where to insert the schwa.

In the case of krk (it's also the name of a Croatian island btw) is it kǝrk or krǝk? Pǝlzeň or Plǝzeň (Plzeň)?


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## cherine

Arrius said:


> Arabic avoids treble and sometimes even double consonants but there are still some daunting consonant clusters that require bucal gymnastics such as in *نطق* /nutq/ (according to the spelling the t sound ought to be an emphatic T *ط* not the ordinary t *ت* , but it seems that not even the Arabs can manage that immediately before the q deep in the throat). Perhaps it is not surprising that the word means _speech or pronunciation. _


I don't think Arabic can be a valid candidate for this thread 
First: because there's a rule in Arabic phonetics prohibiting the sequence of two consonants قاعدة عدة التقاء الساكنين (I'm not sure I translated it right, but in short it's a rule stating that between each two letters there should (must?) be at least a short vowels).
So, in the case of words like نطق nutq there are two possibilities:
1- الإمالة which means pronouncing the letter with sukuun الحرف الساكن (in this word the T) with a very slight vowel: Nut(o)q.
2- pronouncing the last vowel of the word, which -in fuS7a/MSA- depends on its position in a sentence, and in colloquial is like a very short vowel ("noT2*e*" in Egypt). 



Arrius said:


> The champions of "vowel-lessness" must be the Moroccans who accomplish some incredible feats of this kind in their version of Arabic. Perhaps a native speaker or cognoscento would be kind enough to give some examples more impressive than _ktab_ or _fnaa._


It's true that Maghrebi or Moroccan Arabic pronounces words fast, and so it drops few vowels, but I don't think you'll hear more than two consecutive consonants either.

So, again, Arabic is no match for German, Czech or Georgian  And frankly, I love it just the way it is. I hearts all my speech system just the idea of pronouncing words like those posted in the second post


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## Jana337

Ander said:


> My only problem with those "consonant" words is where to insert the schwa.
> 
> In the case of krk (it's also the name of a Croatian island btw) is it kǝrk  or krǝk? Pǝlzeň  or Plǝzeň (Plzeň)?


The sounds are much less schwa-ish than you might expect, though.


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## Outsider

As with other Romance languages, the phonotactics of Portuguese disallows long consonant clusters. Normally, Portuguese consonant clusters are composed of two or three consonants tops, and the first and the last consonant are restricted to a small number of possibilities.

There are also some latinisms with four consecutive consonants, such as _tra*nscr*ição_, "transcription", but phonetically this is composed of only three consonants, because the "n" just serves to indicate that the previous vowel is nasal; it's not pronounced as an individual sound.

Well, at least this is what happens with phonemes. However, in European Portuguese an unstressed "e" is often silent, much like the "e muet" of French. This produces _phonetic_ consonant clusters which can be quite long indeed. See the examples in this page, under "Note 16b: Consonants clusters".


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## modus.irrealis

There's a somewhat related topic All languages: words without vowels, and in there I gave an example from Bella Coola (in British Columbia): sk'lxlxc. And hapax legomenon later gave a bunch of examples from North Pacific languages, so they look like they could give the Slavic and Caucasian languages a run for their money.


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## Forero

In English, can you beat strengths?


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## Outsider

cherine said:


> It's true that Maghrebi or Moroccan Arabic pronounces words fast, and so it drops few vowels, but I don't think you'll hear more than two consecutive consonants either.


I accept what you say about the _number_ of consecutive consonants found in Arabic. However, it still seems to me that the _kind_ of consonants that Arabic allows in clusters make it sound a bit dry (pairs of plosives as in _ma*kt*ub_ are common, for instance).


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## Whodunit

Forero said:


> In English, can you beat strengths?


 
Not within one word. _Twelfth_ is another of such words.



Outsider said:


> I accept what you say about the _number_ of consecutive consonants found in Arabic. However, it still seems to me that the _kind_ of consonants that Arabic allows in clusters make it sound a bit dry (pairs of plosives as in _ma*kt*ub_ are common, for instance).


 
I think Arabic doesn't allow more than two consonants in one row. This could be true for most dialects, too.


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## Arrius

*It's true that Maghrebi or Moroccan Arabic pronounces words fast, and so it drops few vowels, but I don't think you'll hear more than two consecutive consonants either.* (*chérine*)

I think you meant to write "it drops *a* few vowels", which is the opposite of what you did say. In fact to me they seem to drop an awful lot of vowels, enough to make their way of talking unintelligible to many other Arabic speakers. By my reference to Moroccan, and the noun_ *nutq,*_ which I am pretty sure the Saudis manage to pronounce somehow without a vowel between the t and the q - the use of an unemphatic t in place of the emphatic T already facilitating pronunciation a little, (but possibly there is a very slight schwa _after_ the q ), I was trying to draw attention to the _difficulty_ of pronouncing such consonants in sequence rather than the _number _of consonants in a cluster, which as you rightly say is very small.


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## cherine

Outsider said:


> I accept what you say about the _number_ of consecutive consonants found in Arabic. However, it still seems to me that the _kind_ of consonants that Arabic allows in clusters make it sound a bit dry (pairs of plosives as in _ma*kt*ub_ are common, for instance).


They don't sound dry to me  But I understand that a foreign ear perceives the sounds differently.
Yet I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that the second consonant is followed by a vowel, which should make it much less dry to the ear than they look to the eyes.



Arrius said:


> By my reference to Moroccan, and the noun_ *nutq,*_ which I am pretty sure the Saudis manage to pronounce somehow without a vowel between the t and the q - the use of an unemphatic t in place of the emphatic T already facilitating pronunciation a little, (but possibly there is a very slight schwa _after_ the q ), I was trying to draw attention to the _difficulty_ of pronouncing such consonants in sequence rather than the _number _of consonants in a cluster, which as you rightly say is very small.


It's true that pronouncing such consonants in sequence _*is*_ hard. This is why we use the two methods I mentioned.
By the way, I think Saudis go for the first method الإمالة (adding a short vowel between the two consonant), while we -Egyptians- go for the second method: adding a light vowel at the end.

Another similar word: ba7r بحر (sea). Many Arabic dialects pronounce it as ba7ar/ba7er, but Egyptians pronounce it ba7r with a very slight (e) at the end, or sometimes also a sort of pause at the last consonant when it happens to be the last word in the sentence.


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## Lemminkäinen

In Norwegian:

_A*ngstskr*ik_ - 'scream of terror', the 'ng' cluster is pronounced as a palatal nasal, like in English.
_Ha*frsfj*ord_ - a place name, though I think it comes from Norse. 

The linguist Helene Uri came up with the (theoretical) word _skje*lmsk(t)skl*iende_ (the neuter form (=adverbial) of the adjective _skjelmsk_ has a facultative suffix of either no ending, or a 't'), a present participle describing somebody sliding (along a freshly waxed floor, for instance), _skliende_, while looking roguish, waggish (_skjelmsk_ is a bit hard to translate; those were the dictionary's succestions). 

Another (more relevant) possibility would be _skje*lmsk(t)sm*ilende_, which is the act of smiling, not sliding. A word like that, though, would hardly be used in real life; instead you would talk about a _skjelmsk(t) smil_.

My linguistics textbooks says that in Norwegian it's possible with up to three consonents in the onset of a syllable, and up to five in its coda.


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## elroy

Arrius, I don't know where you got the idea that the ط in نطق is pronounced like a ت by native speakers.   This is simply not true, at least not for me or for the other native speakers I know.

Also, I agree that a true consonant cluster has no trace of a vowel anywhere - not even a "slight schwa," Jana.  Since this is a phonological phenomenon, it doesn't make sense to use the graphematical representation of words as your yardstick for determining which consonant clusters are the longest.  After all, in Arabic short vowels are not written so if we only relied on the written form of words we'd be able to offer some impressive "consonant clusters" as in مستشفى (written _mstšfa_ but pronounced _mustašfa_).


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## Outsider

I've just remembered a true 4-consonant cluster in Portuguese: _su*bscr*ever_, to subscribe (a latinism, obviously). However, many native speakers insert an epenthetic vowel between the "b" and the "s", and actually read it as "su*bescr*ever".

Such words are fairly rare, and always "high register". Word-initial consonant clusters are even more restricted than medial ones; they can only contain two consonants at most. Portuguese does not allow true consonant clusters at the end of words.


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> they can only contain two consonants at most.


 
I guess the word _spray_ exists in Portuguese, as it does in Spanish. However, I wonder about the pronunciation of that word in Portuguese, since it is gets a non-written initial "e" sound in spoken Spanish, as far as I know.


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## Outsider

Is "spray" Portuguese, or English? It definitely is a non-adapted loanword, in any case, and as such does not conform to the normal phonotactic rules of Portuguese. In more genuine Portuguese words, the cluster _spr-_ is prohibited at the start of words, as you probably expected.
Curiously, modern Portuguese speakers do not insert an epenthetic "e" before the "s" when they pronounce words like "spray", at least in Portugal. I'd be curious to know how it is in Brazilian Portuguese.


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## Arrius

*Arrius, I don't know where you got the idea that the ط in نطق is pronounced like a ت by native speakers.  This is simply not true, at least not for me or for the other native speakers I know* (*elroy)*
I specifically asked about it in Riyadh because it was a word useful to me but seemed almost impossible to pronounce, and this information, rightly or wrongly, is confirmed in the phonetic transcription of the word in _Langenscheidts Taschenwörterbuch_. I have noticed on various occasions that emphatic consonants can be modified into non-emphatic ones under the influence of the accompanying consonant, though I have never seen this phemoenon touched on in any course book except sometimes by implication when phonetic transcriptions are given.


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> Is "spray" Portuguese, or English? It definitely is a non-adapted loanword, in any case, and as such does not conform to the normal phonotactic rules of Portuguese. In more genuine Portuguese words, the cluster _spr-_ is prohibited at the start of words, as you probably expected.


 
It is English, but some Portuguese dictionaries offer the Portuguese loan word _spray_ for English _spray_. You're the native speaker, but I think the word exists in Portuguese as well as it does in Spanish. 



> Curiously, modern Portuguese speakers do not insert an epenthetic "e" before the "s" when they pronounce words like "spray", at least in Portugal. I'd be curious to know how it is in Brazilian Portuguese.


 
Interestingly, my Spanish dictionary uses an initial (non-written) [e-] in the IPA transcription for words beginning with _spr-_. Do you have a Portuguese phonetic dictionary handy?


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## Lugubert

Ander said:


> My only problem with those "consonant" words is where to insert the schwa.


No schwas; r and l work like vowels. If I remember the standard Czech sentence correctly, it's _Strč prst v krk_ 'Stick your finger into your throat.' Czech also has _vlk _'wolf'.

Sanskrit also had r- and l-vowels. I think I have seen the cluster krtsnya, where the r is a vowel and the y a semivowel. Words inherited from such Sanskrit words in today's languages of India get the vowels r and l replaced with, normally, -ri- and -ul-.


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## Qcumber

cheshire said:


> Czech: *Vlt*ava


This is the name of the large river that crosses the beautiful city of Prague. I was there for Easter.

I suppose you are talking about the spelling, because, as regards the pronunciation, there is no such consonant cluster. I heard a vowel (/œ/) between the /v/ and the /l/, and the syllable /vœl/ was stressed: /'vœltava/.

There is a city the name of which is spelt Brno, but my informants pronounced it /'bœrnO/ (rolled /r/, open /o/).

In brief you should make the difference between strings of written consonants (spelling) and strings of pronounced consonants (phonetics).

English has some phonetic consonant clusters:
e.g. scratched ['skrætSt] (S = sh)


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## Qcumber

Arrius said:


> *Arrius, I don't know where you got the idea that the ط in نطق is pronounced like a ت by native speakers.  This is simply not true, at least not for me or for the other native speakers I know* (*elroy)*
> I have noticed on various occasions that emphatic consonants can be modified into non-emphatic ones under the influence of the accompanying consonant, though I have never seen this phemoenon touched on in any course book except sometimes by implication when phonetic transcriptions are given.


My impression is that generally it is the non-emphatic consonant that becomes emphatic in the presence of an emphatic consonant.
Besides, in the case of /nTq/, the /q/ would rather support emphasization.


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## Forero

Qcumber said:


> This is the name of the large river that crosses the beautiful city of Prague. I was there for Easter.
> 
> I suppose you are talking about the spelling, because, as regards the pronunciation, there is no such consonant cluster. I heard a vowel (/Ø/) between the /v/ and the /l/, and the syllable /vØl/ was stressed: /'vØltava/.
> 
> There is a city the name of which is spelt Brno, but my informants pronounced it /'bØrnO/ (rolled /r/, open /o/).



I believe the vowel, such as it is, is simultaneous with the consonant.  The vowel is not /Ø/ though, it's just the "vowel" that comes out when you make the consonant sound, which is different for /l/ than for /r/.  I've noticed that when I say "-ism", I slip a vowel in between the /z/ and the /m/, but when I say "hmmmmm", the only "vowel" is the "mmmmm".

Because "l", "r", and "m" are voiced and can be extended indefinitely, they can be used like vowels as syllabic nuclei.


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## Forero

Outsider said:


> I've just remembered a true 4-consonant cluster in Portuguese: _su*bscr*ever_, to subscribe (a latinism, obviously). However, many native speakers insert an epenthetic vowel between the "b" and the "s", and actually read it as "su*bescr*ever".
> 
> Such words are fairly rare, and always "high register". Word-initial consonant clusters are even more restricted than medial ones; they can only contain two consonants at most. Portuguese does not allow true consonant clusters at the end of words.



Spanish has almost the same word _subscribir_ with no vowel inserted, but the _b_ before _s_ sounds more like a _p_.  Speakers of Spanish usually do add a prothetic /e/ on loan words beginning with _scr_.


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## Qcumber

Forero said:


> I believe the vowel, such as it is, is simultaneous with the consonant. The vowel is not /Ø/ though, it's just the "vowel" that comes out when you make the consonant sound, which is different for /l/ than for /r/. I've noticed that when I say "-ism", I slip a vowel in between the /z/ and the /m/, but when I say "hmmmmm", the only "vowel" is the "mmmmm". Because "l", "r", and "m" are voiced and can be extended indefinitely, they can be used like vowels as syllabic nuclei.



Oops  I used the wrong phonetic symbol! Sorry. The unwritten vowel in the Czeck words is /œ/ not /Ø/: Vltava/'vœltava/, Brno /'bœrnO/, vlk /vœlk/ wolf", etc.


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## Forero

Qcumber said:


> [/SIZE]
> Oops  I used the wrong phonetic symbol! Sorry. The unwritten vowel in the Czeck words is /œ/ not /Ø/: Vltava/'vœltava/, Brno /'bœrnO/, vlk /vœlk/ wolf", etc.



I don't think either one is /œ/ either.  Maybe the preceding (labial) consonants are causing some rounding and disguising the underlying "vowel", which I don't take as /e/ or /epsilon/ (sorry I don't have phonetic symbols).  

If you know of a website that could allow an old computer to play the sounds, I would like to hear what you are talking about.  The one I played for syllabic /r/ sounded, if anything, like a simultaneous /inverted epsilon/.  The syllabic /l/ I am imagining is a "dark" /l/ (/l/ with a simultaneous /thing that looks like a cursive lowercase gamma and means an unrounded /o//), but it may be a "light" /l/ (with a simultaneous /inverted e = schwa symbol/).


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## Henryk

Whodunit said:


> Here's an article about consonant clusters with some interesting languages (Georgian is on top --> eight consonants in a row; Maori doesn't allow two or more consonants in a row).
> 
> As for German, I can't think of bigger consonant clusters than five in single words (but inflected!):
> 
> du ma*mpfst* (you're munchin)
> du i*mpfst* (you're vaccinating)
> 
> For compound words, it is easy to find five-consonant words:
> 
> Na*chtstr*om (off-peak electricity)
> Plu*mpskl*o (outhouse; privy)
> He*rbstzw*eig (not very common: autumn branch)*
> 
> In colloquial speech, vowels are often omitted. In our dialect, we'd say:
> 
> *D's b'k*omm'chhin*.* (Das bekomme ich hin = I'll manage that) - _but this is not one word_
> Glau*bnskr*iek (Glaubenskrieg = religious war)
> 
> *if the "r" counts, it would be 7 consonants in one row: [he6bsttsvaIg]



What about Angstschweiß?


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## Qcumber

Forero said:


> I don't think either one is /œ/ either. Maybe the preceding (labial) consonants are causing some rounding and disguising the underlying "vowel", which I don't take as /e/ or /epsilon/ (sorry I don't have phonetic symbols).


I may be wrong, but I didn't have the acoustic impression it was a parasitic schwa generated by one of the consonants, or any other utterance of this kind.

I asked several people in different places:
1) at the hotel: 
a male receptionist and a female receptionist
two young female guides

2) on the main square:
a group of boys and girls



> If you know of a website that could allow an old computer to play the sounds, I would like to hear what you are talking about. The one I played for syllabic /r/ sounded, if anything, like a simultaneous /inverted epsilon/. The syllabic /l/ I am imagining is a "dark" /l/ (/l/ with a simultaneous /thing that looks like a cursive lowercase gamma and means an unrounded /o//), but it may be a "light" /l/ (with a simultaneous /inverted e = schwa symbol/).


Sorry, for the moment I don't know of any website with the recorded pronunciation of these words - and audible on old computers  - but if I find one, I'll let you know.


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## Whodunit

Henryk said:


> What about Angstschweiß?


 
_Sch_ are not three consonants, but only one as in English _sh _[ʃ]. Additionally, I don't think that we could count _n_ as a consonant here. It forms, together with the _g_, the phoneme [ŋ].


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## Forero

Qcumber said:


> I may be wrong, but I didn't have the acoustic impression it was a parasitic schwa generated by one of the consonants, or any other utterance of this kind.



I don't understand "parasitic schwa" but I assume you mean a vowel simultaneous with the consonant.

About the rounding though:  have you heard any words with syllabic _l_ or _r_ other than just after a labial consonant?


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## Henryk

Whodunit said:


> _Sch_ are not three consonants


 Of course they are. It's irrelevant that they produce a different sound together. It's quite another classification.




> Additionally, I don't think that we could count _n_ as a consonant here. It forms, together with the _g_, the phoneme [ŋ].


You're making it way too complicated. They are definitely consonants and they'll always be, no matter what is done with them. 

Or would you say there are no players in a football team because they are considered to be a team?


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## jonquiliser

I think Swedish comes out quite pale in a comparison here, but for what it's worth, the longest combination I can think of now is something ending in _-ländskt_ ('landish', of this or that land or area): utlä*ndskt*, making a string of (a mere) five vowels. Of which, by the way, the d is almost not or not at all audible...


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## Outsider

Henryk said:


> Of course they are. It's irrelevant that they produce a different sound together. It's quite another classification.
> 
> [...]
> 
> You're making it way too complicated. They are definitely consonants and they'll always be, no matter what is done with them.
> 
> Or would you say there are no players in a football team because they are considered to be a team?


We need to clarify whether we're speaking about sounds or letters. "Sch" is three letters, but just one sound. I think it's more interesting to compare sounds than letters, because the same sound may be spelled in various ways in different languages: for example, "sch" in German, "sh" in English, "š" in Czech... Otherwise, it will not be a fair comparison.


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## Whodunit

Henryk said:


> Of course they are. It's irrelevant that they produce a different sound together. It's quite another classification.


 
You should read the entire thread. We want to concentrate on sounds. However, I must apologize; I expressed it incorrectly. What I wanted to say was: "_Sch_ are not three consonant *sounds*."



> Or would you say there are no players in a football team because they are considered to be a team?


 
That's irrelevant here, but if you want it: All the football players alone could never win the championship, but they play together, they can beat everyone else. Same here: The letters but be seen as a whole; some letters may be isolated (as in Sport*s*kanone), but the "r" in that word belongs to the "o" and is not a real consonant, for example. 

Qcumber put it very well, by the way!


----------



## Athaulf

Ubykh language would probably leave the competition in the dust if it were still alive (the last native speaker unfortunately died in 1992). Its phonemic inventory contained no less than 84 consonants. 

You can hear a sample of this language here.


----------



## sarcie

Have we no Welsh-speakers on the forum?  To use a much-dragged-up example:
*Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
*(Welsh village)


----------



## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> Interestingly, my Spanish dictionary uses an initial (non-written) [e-] in the IPA transcription for words beginning with _spr-_. Do you have a Portuguese phonetic dictionary handy?


Most dictionaries of Portuguese do not include phonetic transcription. The _Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa Contemporânea_, infamous in Portugal for being stock-full with foreign words, includes "spray", and gives the pronunciation [sprâj] for it, where "â" is the IPA symbol for the near-open central vowel.
The _Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa_ lists "spray", but marks it _ing_. (--> English), and gives the English pronunciation [spRej], where "R" is the IPA symbol for the alveolar approximant.


----------



## jonquiliser

sarcie said:


> Have we no Welsh-speakers on the forum?  To use a much-dragged-up example:
> *Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch*
> (Welsh village)


 
Any chance of hearing how this is pronounced anywhere?  (checked on Wiki, there was nothing )


----------



## Arrius

This Welsh town is, for obvious reasons, known to the English simply by what sounds like _Clang Fire,_ quite distinct from its true meaning (as well the pronunciation of the initial _Ll ,_ close to the ch in German _nicht_), which true meaning I leave some Welshman or Wikipedia-user to provide in full. 
Cymru am byth! (Wales for ever!)


----------



## Forero

sarcie said:


> Have we no Welsh-speakers on the forum?  To use a much-dragged-up example:
> *Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
> *(Welsh village)



Actually all those _w_s and _y_s are vowels.  Welsh does not use _y_ or _w_ as a consonant.  Right, Outsider?  By the way what does your signature mean (I've been dying to ask)?



Outsider said:


> Deuparth gwaith yw ei ddechrau.


----------



## Outsider

Forero said:


> Actually all those _w_s and _y_s are vowels.  Welsh does not use _y_ or _w_ as a consonant.  Right, Outsider?


They are sometimes vowels and sometimes consonants, like _y_ in English. My signature is a Welsh saying. You should be able to find its meaning with a web search.


----------



## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> Most dictionaries of Portuguese do not include phonetic transcription. The _Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa Contemporânea_, infamous in Portugal for being stock-full with foreign words, includes "spray", and gives the pronunciation [sprâj] for it, where "â" is the IPA symbol for the near-open central vowel.
> The _Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa_ lists "spray", but marks it _ing_. (--> English), and gives the English pronunciation [spRej], where "R" is the IPA symbol for the alveolar approximant.


 
But have you ever used the word? And how would you have pronounced it in Portuguese if you hadn't checked in a dictionary?


----------



## Qcumber

Athaulf said:


> Ubykh language [...] You can hear a sample of this language here.


Listening to the recording I had the impression this language has about two score consonants, and that many complex ones are just ordinary consonant clusters.
A phonetic transcription would help.


----------



## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> But have you ever used the word? And how would you have pronounced it in Portuguese if you hadn't checked in a dictionary?


I have used it, and I pronounce it as the _Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa Contemporânea_ says, when I'm speaking in Portuguese.


----------



## Athaulf

Qcumber said:


> Listening to the recording I had the impression this language _[Ubykh]_ has about two score consonants, and that many complex ones are just ordinary consonant clusters.
> A phonetic transcription would help.



There is a transcription of this clip on the Wikipedia page, and some more interesting info here. There is also some interesting discussion in the discussion pages of the above Wikipedia articles; people who claim expertise in the language say that the analysis yielding 80+ consonants is not controversial except in a few minor details. Most of this stuff is way over my head, though.


----------



## john_riemann_soong

It seems a lot of languages that permit long strings of consonants seem to be highly inflected, fusional or synthetic. Are there any analytic languages that permit long strings of consonants?

I wonder if you can make estimates about the relative relatedness of one language to another (even from tongues from different superfamilies) 
based on their phonotactics. Could one say that the Chinese language is more closely related to the IE family than the Bantu languages, for example. Basque has no empirical relationship to IE but from their similarity in phonotactics, it would seem to suggest they are closer than say, IE and Georgian.


----------



## Qcumber

Athaulf said:


> There is a transcription of this clip on the Wikipedia page, and some more interesting info here. There is also some interesting discussion in the discussion pages of the above Wikipedia articles; people who claim expertise in the language say that the analysis yielding 80+ consonants is not controversial except in a few minor details. Most of this stuff is way over my head, though.


Thanks a lot for the link. I'll have to study all this carefully.


----------



## Whodunit

john_riemann_soong said:


> It seems a lot of languages that permit long strings of consonants seem to be highly inflected, fusional or synthetic. Are there any analytic languages that permit long strings of consonants?


Very good observation! For Chinese, I can't find a longer consonant cluster than these, but they only work in compound characters*: 明天 (mí*ngt*īan - tomorrow); 宠物 (chŏ*ngw*ù - house pet); 搬家 (bā*nji*ā); 中国 (Zhō*nggu*ó - China), but I'm not sure if we can count these at all:

'ng' form the [ŋ] phoneme > one consonant?
"w" is, as far as a I'm aware, the semi-vowel [w] > vowel or consonant?
an "i" after "j" may not be treated as a consonant as in Japanese, but it would still be a semi-vowel > [i] _ or _[j]?
are both final and initial consonants are spoken in compounds when they represent the same phoneme?



> Could one say that the Chinese language is more closely related to the IE family than the Bantu languages, for example.


Firstly, what does that have to do with this thread and secondly, could you give an example how you mean that? Why should Chinese be more related to IE?


> Basque has no empirical relationship to IE but from their similarity in phonotactics, it would seem to suggest they are closer than say, IE and Georgian.


Could you perhaps give an example to support your assumption? I'm not saying I don't think the same, but Basque is not unintentionally called an isolated language. I don't know whether the Caucasian and IE languages share the same roots (no one knows for sure!), but I wouldn't say either that Basque has always been the only language of its own language family.


----------



## john_riemann_soong

Whodunit said:


> Very good observation! For Chinese, I can't find a longer consonant cluster than these, but they only work in compound characters*: 明天 (mí*ngt*īan - tomorrow); 宠物 (chŏ*ngw*ù - house pet); 搬家 (bā*nji*ā); 中国 (Zhō*nggu*ó - China), but I'm not sure if we can count these at all:
> 
> 'ng' form the [ŋ] phoneme > one consonant?
> "w" is, as far as a I'm aware, the semi-vowel [w] > vowel or consonant?
> an "i" after "j" may not be treated as a consonant as in Japanese, but it would still be a semi-vowel > [i] or [j]?
> are both final and initial consonants are spoken in compounds when they represent the same phoneme?


There isn't much liaison in Mandarin, although you have tone sandhi (nearby tones affecting other tones). However, I think there is a complex liaison system in Wu. IIRC, most Mandarin speakers avoid linking the ending syllable of one word to the first syllable of the next. Hence, "wo" is really /uɔ/, not /wɔ/, and "yi" is always /i/, and never /ji/ and "yao" is /iaw/. The "ng" would never initialise a vowel, even if you had -ngyi-.

Because of this, gemination tends to be strictly followed as well. But I am not sure if this is specific to Standard Mandarin or whether it applies to the other dialects. I am not sure if it is because of the American influence or whether it is actual, but I think some of my Singaporean peers do not strictly follow these rules and commit liaison -- because I sometimes catch myself doing it too, and I assume I draw the influence from them.


> Firstly, what does that have to do with this thread and secondly, could you give an example how you mean that? Why should Chinese be more related to IE?


Because their phonotactics have much more in common, than say, Bantu and IE. They are not formally related, so it is a controversial assumption to make. This I realise.

One of the main problems with this I think is that phonotactics tends to spread areally -- forming a sprachsbund -- just like you have the Baltic Linguistic Union and so forth. That is why there is a controversy over the "Altaic languages", a language family that links Finnish, Hungarian, Turkey, Eskimo and Japanese -- they share phonotactics (among them, vowel harmony) that is too much to be a coincidence, but they wonder if it is genetic or a sprachsbund.

But if it were genetic, and we were to make macrohistorical observations, we can make guesses about relationships. I guess I'm wondering because what the phonotactics allow (such as, pronouncing long chains of consonants in one word without an intervening vowel) we can make educated guesses. These guesses are just like guessing there must be an aether in the universe for light to travel -- possibly very wrong, but you have to start somewhere.


> Could you perhaps give an example to support your assumption? I'm not saying I don't think the same, but Basque is not unintentionally called an isolated language. I don't know whether the Caucasian and IE languages share the same roots (no one knows for sure!), but I wouldn't say either that Basque has always been the only language of its own language family.


You cannot use "examples" -- rather you can only use phonotactic concepts and so forth. I'm not into mass comparison either, since too often you can get coincidences that mean nothing.

It is in part due to the "feel"; for example, despite Latin sounding massively different, and having much different grammar, you can tell it is in the same language family as English, or much closer, compared to say, Somali. That's because much of the phonotactics remains the same. I am not sure if you can objectively "measure" feel, but even when vocabulary and grammar is different, there are parts of languages that seem the "same".

I know Basque is an isolated language. But that is because there are no recorded relationships between Basque and other languages, except for some tentative observations between Basque and Etruscan. But this does not mean there is no relationship. If we were to make a guess, is what I mean.


----------



## mcibor

sarcie said:


> Have we no Welsh-speakers on the forum?  To use a much-dragged-up example:
> *Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
> *(Welsh village)





jonquiliser said:


> Any chance of hearing how this is pronounced anywhere?  (checked on Wiki, there was nothing )




You can find it here:
http://llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.co.uk/


In Polish really hard to pronounce are

*trzc*ina [tʃʨina] - reed
nie*ch czcz*ony [ńiehtʃtʃony] - be praised (I have to sing that, so I know  )
o*drdz*ewiacz [odr] - deruster
*szczw*any [ʃtʃfany] - in German it's durchtrieben, not sure how is it in English, sth like intelligent in a negative matter
o*dbrz*mi, more common - rozbrzmi [odbʒmi] - will sound (verklingen)

I think there are even more, 

but the best Polish toung twister is:

Chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie w Szczebrzeszynie, strząsa skrzydła z dżdżu. I trzmiel w puszczy tuż przy Pszczynie straszny wszczyna szum.

Regards
Michał


----------



## Whodunit

mcibor said:


> *trzc*ina [tʃʨina] - reed


 
And what about the "r" in the Polish word? Isnt "rz" pronounced like a trilled "r" and an English "sh" simultaneously, like the Czech ř?



> nie*ch czcz*ony [ńiehtʃtʃony] - be praised (I have to sing that, so I know  )


 
I think it is rather [njextʃtʃoni], isn't it?



> o*drdz*ewiacz [odr] - deruster


 
What happens to the "dz" combination? Is it [odrdzevjatʃ]?



> *szczw*any [ʃtʃfany] - in German it's durchtrieben, not sure how is it in English, sth like intelligent in a negative matter


 
I geuss you mean _sly_.


----------



## Outsider

john_riemann_soong said:


> Because their phonotactics have much more in common, than say, Bantu and IE.


I am not a linguist, but from the replies in this thread it seems that the phonotactics of Chinese has more in common with that of the Bantu languages than with that of the Indo-European languages:



Arrius said:


> _By the way, the antithesis of the Moroccans in this matter are the Bantu of Southern Africa, who so much resist consonant clusters that the term *bottle store* (off licence in the UK, liquor store in the States) becomes __*Botilo Sitilo* (no kidding) which is actually written on the sign over the shop._


IE languages seem to be much more friendly towards consonant clusters, in general.

But let me add that I'm not entirely persuaded that phonotactics remains reasonably constant within language families. For example, Germanic languages have very different phonotactics from Romance languages. The latter have many restrictions on the consonant clusters that they allow, while the former are quite free with the combinations that they permit. That's what gives most Romance languages that distinctive sound.


----------



## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> I am not a linguist, but from the replies in this thread it seems that the phonotactics of Chinese has more in common with that of the Bantu languages than with that of the Indo-European languages:


 
Chinese has tones, Bantu languages don't. Here's an example of the Kongo language, and here's one for Chinese (Pinyin). Who can tell that they look (we can't listen to them now) more IE than Lycian (sample text below)?



> IE languages seem to be much more friendly towards consonant clusters, in general.


 
More friendly than what? Yes to "more than Chinese", no to "more than any other language family".


----------



## Outsider

I fear that something in what I wrote got lost in translation.

John argued some posts ago that Chinese is closer to IE languages than Bantu languages are, because the phonotactics of the former two are more similar to each other than any of them is to the phonotactics of the Bantu languages.

I am disputing his justification: I find the phonotactics of Chinese (where consonant clusters are very restricted) more similar to what I've heard about the phonotactics of the Bantu languages (that also tend to break up consonant clusters in loanwords) than to the phonotactics of IE languages (many of which, as we have seen, allow quite impressively long consonant clusters).

A comparison with the Afro-Asiatic languages is also interesting. Until this thread, I had not realised that Arabic diallowed consonant clusters with more than two elements. By contrast, consonant clusters with up to four elements are fairly ordinary, even in the most phonotactically restrictive IE languages (such as the Romance languages).

Of course, phonotactics is just one dimension you can look at in a language or language family. I am not trying to argue for a relation between these language families. Quite the opposite; as I said, I am not convinced that phonotactics is a good indicator of the origin of a language.


----------



## Arrius

*Chinese has tones, Bantu languages don't* (*Whodunit*).
You're right about Chinese (presumably all the many different varieties of it) but I can vouch for it from long personal experience that the Tonga language, more correctly referred to as Chitonga, definitely _does _have tones, is also definitely Bantu and is spoken around Monze near Victoria Falls. I am sure there are other Bantu languages with tones but will leave someone else to stick their neck out about that, if considered relevant. And do not confuse this Tonga with the Pacific Island of Tonga which has nothing to do with this.
I have long ago lost count of the languages of which you have a lesser or greater knowledge, Whodunit, but I would bet that Chitonga isn't one of them.
Tschüß.
Arrius


----------



## vince

I think that the fact that all Chinese languages have tones might be because of the loss of consonant clusters that lowered the number of distinct syllables. Ancient Chinese had consonant clusters, at least to the same level that Thai does today, but never anything extreme like 4 consonant sounds together or more.


----------



## Qcumber

Whodunit said:


> And what about the "r" in the Polish word? Isnt "rz" pronounced like a trilled "r" and an English "sh" simultaneously, like the Czech ř?


You mean r + sh before unvoiced consonants and at the end of words, but r + zh in other positions.


----------



## Whodunit

Arrius said:


> You're right about Chinese (presumably all the many different varieties of it) but I can vouch for it from long personal experience that the Tonga language, more correctly referred to as Chitonga, definitely _does _have tones, is also definitely Bantu and is spoken around Monze near Victoria Falls. I am sure there are other Bantu languages with tones but will leave someone else to stick their neck out about that, if considered relevant. And do not confuse this Tonga with the Pacific Island of Tonga which has nothing to do with this.
> I have long ago lost count of the languages of which you have a lesser or greater knowledge, Whodunit, but I would bet that Chitonga isn't one of them.
> Tschüß.
> Arrius


 
I'm sorry, Arrius. I don't know much (if at all!) about Bantu languages, so you're right that you know much more about them than I do. And I really didn't know that they have tones! Nevertheless, this doesn't mean that Chinese is in any way more like the IE languages than Chitonga. 



vince said:


> I think that the fact that all Chinese languages have tones might be because of the loss of consonant clusters that lowered the number of distinct syllables.


 
Japanese can very well do without tones, too, and it doesn't permit any consonant cluster either, except for the _n_, which can appear without a vowel, too.



Qcumber said:


> You mean r + sh before unvoiced consonants and at the end of words, but r + zh in other positions.


 
That's true for Czech, but I don't know it for Polish. Is the _rz_ in _dobrze_ pronounced differently than the one in _trzy_?


----------



## john_riemann_soong

Arrius said:


> *Chinese has tones, Bantu languages don't* (*Whodunit*).
> You're right about Chinese (presumably all the many different varieties of it) but I can vouch for it from long personal experience that the Tonga language, more correctly referred to as Chitonga, definitely _does _have tones, is also definitely Bantu and is spoken around Monze near Victoria Falls. I am sure there are other Bantu languages with tones but will leave someone else to stick their neck out about that, if considered relevant. And do not confuse this Tonga with the Pacific Island of Tonga which has nothing to do with this.
> I have long ago lost count of the languages of which you have a lesser or greater knowledge, Whodunit, but I would bet that Chitonga isn't one of them.
> Tschüß.
> Arrius



As I am aware, the West African languages have tones too, but they are solid tones rather than "contour" tones.

It is theorised that Old Chinese did not have tone; Middle Chinese borrowed tone from its southern neighbours (Khmer/Hmong families). 

Greek languages had tone too. Now, tone wasn't what I was driving at, however.


Outsider said:


> I fear that something in what I wrote got lost in translation.
> 
> John argued some posts ago that Chinese is closer to IE languages than Bantu languages are, because the phonotactics of the former two are more similar to each other than any of them is to the phonotactics of the Bantu languages.
> 
> I am disputing his justification: I find the phonotactics of Chinese (where consonant clusters are very restricted) more similar to what I've heard about the phonotactics of the Bantu languages (that also tend to break up consonant clusters in loanwords) than to the phonotactics of IE languages (many of which, as we have seen, allow quite impressively long consonant clusters).



Consonant-strings are only one dimension of phonotactics. 

Consonant clusters are restricted in Mandarin (in fact there are none at all) but this is not necessarily the same for the other Chinese languages. 

I guess it is a sort of "ineffable" feeling I can't pinpoint, but for example it would seem the Afro-Asiatic family has more in common with the Indo-European family than with the sub-Saharan languages, for example; and the Austronesian to Chinese. Chinese seems more distant from Japanese than it is from Austronesian, actually. 

Of course, perhaps a large bulk of this is due to areal transmission rather than genetics.


----------



## Outsider

More consonant clusters here. I don't think these were mentioned before.


----------



## astlanda

Estonian

vi*ntskl*ema = to twist


----------



## Lugubert

vince said:


> I think that the fact that all Chinese languages have tones might be because of the loss of consonant clusters that lowered the number of distinct syllables. Ancient Chinese had consonant clusters, at least to the same level that Thai does today, but never anything extreme like 4 consonant sounds together or more.


I don't think there's a direct link between the emergence of tones and the reduction of clusters. When Indian Prakrits got reduced like when the Sanskrit (or rather some parallel Vedic Prakrit) word agatah (not-gone), became in later Apabhramsha languages āao (first and last vowels long), they managed by other means than tones to evolve into today's modern Indian languages.

Besides, being a Swede, I don't regard for example _lä*rftskr*amhandel_ 'haberdashery' with its 6 contiguous consonats extreme at all.


----------



## francisgranada

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
How many consonants can be in a single cluster in your language?
And, eventually, are there words without vowels in your language?

*Slovak*:

*smrť* - death
*smršť* - whirlwind, cyclone
*prst* - finger
*vlk* - wolf
*tĺcť* - to bang, to beat
etc...

*zmrzl*ina - ice cream
*štrng*ať - to clink
etc...

(as far as I know, 5 consonants are the maximum)


----------



## Tamar

In Hebrew there are no words without vowels. 

Clusters in Hebrew are CV/CCV. 
You could have CVCC. 
Couldn't think if a hebrew word with a three consonant cluster.
I did find the word שרימפס shrimps ccvccc, which we do say, but it is however, a borrowed word so it doesn't necessarily count, right?


----------



## sound shift

In *English*, the onset (initial part) of a syllable can consist of one, two or three consonants. The final part (coda) can consist of up to four consonants. (Source: Ekkehard König and Johan van der Auwera (eds), The Germanic Languages)

As far as I know, English has no words without vowels.


----------



## dadda-dutz

5 consonants in English (Strengths). Lots of words without vowels if you don't count "y". Or "w" for some Welsh words.


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## francisgranada

dadda-dutz said:


> 5 consonants in English (Strengths)....


 
In the written form, but "th" represents a single sound. Neverthless, interesting...


----------



## sound shift

Yes, English can have five consonant sounds in a syllable, but not in a cluster. "Glimpsed" is an example.


----------



## francisgranada

In *Italian*, as far as I have noticed, 3 consonants are the maximum, e.g. sdraiare, completo ...

Of course, no words without vowels are possible (except prepositions or articles with apostophe like _l'_ or _d'_ which are always followed by a word beginning with vowel).


----------



## Rallino

In *Turkish*, 3 consonants are the maximum, as well. But they never form clusters, as they are never in the same syllable. (As far as I know, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants that are in the same syllable, right?)

Some Examples:

Altmış = Sixty _(The syllables are: Alt-mış)
_ 
Arttırmak = To increase _(The syllables are: Art-tır-mak)_

Kışkırtmak = to provoke _(The syllables are: Kış-kırt-mak)_

So, a maximum of 3 consonants can follow each other, but the clusters contain only 2 consonants, the 3rd goes to the next syllable.


----------



## jazyk

Portuguese doesn't have many consonant clusters. One I can think of is obstruir (4 consonants). Since we are not used to these things, a lot of Brazilians add a vowel in the pronunciation, so you get something like obistruir (sic). Even words with two-consonant clusters like advogado (lawyer, advocate) are sometimes pronounced adivogado (sic).


----------



## francisgranada

Rallino said:


> In *Turkish*, 3 consonants are the maximum, as well. But they never form clusters, as they are never in the same syllable...


 
Probably the same in *Hungarian* (I've never analyzed or studied this phenomenon ...):

_nyolcvan_ = eighty (_the syllables are: nyolc-van)_
_(a) földre =_ to/on (the) ground_ (the syllables are: föld-re)_
_(a) holdnál =_ by (the) moon_ (the syllables are: hold-nál)_

Words without vowels: they are not possible in Hungarian, the only exception is "_*s*_", a colloquial abbreviated form of "_és_" (= and).



Rallino said:


> ... As far as I know, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants that are in the same syllable, right?


 
Yes. I didn't want to to go so "deeply" as to analyze the structure of the words. Maybe "groups of consonants" would be a better term for this question.


----------



## Rallino

francisgranada said:


> [...]
> 
> Words without vowels: they are not possible in Hungarian, the only exception is "_*s*_", a colloquial abbreviated form of "_és_" (= and).
> 
> [...]



I thought *és* was the colloquial form, and _*s*_ was more poetic and formal, am I mistaken?

(Except for the fixed expression _'Hogy s mint_', that is. )


----------



## Favara

3-consonant clusters are pretty common in Catalan (a*rbr*e, pe*rdr*e, ve*ndr*e, e*scr*ive*nts*, se*rps*, di*scs*, mala*lts*...); I'm not sure what the limit is, but I can think of a few with 4 (o*bstr*uir, extreure [x->/ks/]...).
As far as I know, there are no words without vowels in Catalan except maybe some onomatopoeia or interjections (i.e. saying _xt! _/ʃt/ to demand silence).


----------



## francisgranada

Rallino said:


> I thought *és* was the colloquial form, and _*s*_ was more poetic and formal, am I mistaken?
> 
> (Except for the fixed expression _'Hogy s mint_', that is. )


 
Colloquial, not in the sense of "vulgar" or "incorrect". But you may say e.g. _"S akkor találkoztam vele..."_ (= And then I met him...), but if you wrote down the same phrase in a letter you would probably write "_És akkor ..."._ 

You are right, also poetic, depending on the context, euphony, rhyme, pathetic connotation ... etc. But not in the sense, that all the "_és_" should be automatically replaced by "_s_" in a poem or poetry ... In some older printed texts, this "_s_" was written also with an apostophe [*'s*], but in very old printed texts and manuscripts you can find only the "full" form "és" (or "es"). 

By the way, thank you , my formulation (i.e. "a colloquial abbreviated form...") is not precise enough and may be misleading.


----------



## Rallino

Ah, I understand now, I really didn't know. Thanks very much


----------



## francisgranada

jazyk said:


> ... Since we are not used to these things, a lot of Brazilians add a vowel in the pronunciation, so you get something like obistruir (sic). Even words with two-consonant clusters like advogado (lawyer, advocate) are sometimes pronounced adivogado (sic).


 
It's interesting (and phonetically also understandable). 

I have a question: spontaneous pronouciations like "_avogado"_ and "_ostruir",_ are also possible in the Brasilian portuguese or not at all?


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## jazyk

I've never heard them.


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## mataripis

Tagalog: maximum of two like "kailan", " iabot", saan. I want to add correction, most Pilipinos use "ao", "Ia" to produce the sound "aw" and "Ya". I believe , everytime there are two vovels in a word ,this sounds like this  "ao" = a-oh not aw as in Tao(Ta-oh), so when writing "Mindanao" and "Cubao" (spelled in Spanish), it is accurate to write  them like this "Mindanaw" and "Kubaw". (binaybay pa Tagalog) (spelled the Tagalog way)


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## Orlin

francisgranada said:


> How many consonants can be in a single cluster in your language?
> And, eventually, are there words without vowels in your language?
> 
> *Slovak*:
> 
> *smrť* - death
> *smršť* - whirlwind, cyclone
> *prst* - finger
> *vlk* - wolf
> *tĺcť* - to bang, to beat
> etc...
> 
> *zmrzl*ina - ice cream
> *štrng*ať - to clink
> etc...
> 
> (as far as I know, 5 consonants are the maximum)


First, I'm not sure if these examples are true consonant clusters because they contain a syllabic consonant. I know actively Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS), in which there's syllabic *r* and as far as I know, this syllabic consonant is practically always accompanied (before or after) by a weak schwa sound, which is not considered phonemic and not spelled only by convention (it was a true vowel at an earlier stage of language history and written down). I think it's more or less the same in Slovak and some of the words mentioned are the same in BCS (e. g. _smrt_, _prst_).
In Bulgarian there are no syllabic consonants and consonant clusters (in different syllables) up to 5 consonants are possible: студе*нтств*о, президе*нтств*о. 4-consonant clusters are much more common: клие*нтск*и, А*встр*алия, ко*нстр*укция, лука*вств*о itd.


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## vianie

francisgranada said:


> *štrng*ať - to clink
> etc...
> 
> (as far as I know, 5 consonants are the maximum)



And what about that verb in the perfective aspect - *štrngn*úť ?


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## francisgranada

vianie said:


> And what about that verb in the perfective aspect - *štrngn*úť ?


 
So the record in Slovak, for the moment, are 6 consonants .


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## francisgranada

Orlin said:


> First, I'm not sure if these examples are true consonant clusters because they contain a syllabic consonant. I know actively Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS), in which there's syllabic *r* and as far as I know, this syllabic consonant is practically always accompanied (before or after) by a weak schwa sound, which is not considered phonemic and not spelled only by convention (it was a true vowel at an earlier stage of language history and written down). I think it's more or less the same in Slovak and some of the words mentioned are the same in BCS (e. g. _smrt_, _prst_)...


 
You are righ, *r* and *l* are syllabic consonants, neverthless they are considered consonants, and they are not possible in many (or most of) languages. As I have already said (#10), maybe instead of "clusters", "groups of consonants" would be a better term for this question. 

(Perhaps, an other thread about the pronounciation and history of syllabic consonants could be also interesting...)


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## Orlin

I think we should decide what criterion we should use to define consonant clusters/groups of consonants: spelling or pronunciation (you see that there's a problem with *syllabic* consonatns - they're usually if not always accompanied by weak non-phonemic vowels not recorded in conventional spelling).

P. S.: New thread about syllabic consonants in Slavic languages - pronunciation and history.


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## olaszinho

Italian has a few words of Latin origin with 4 consonants such as: su*bstr*ato. Take a look at this Italian word with 6 vowels: cuoiaio/tanner. To be honest, I have to say that three of them sound like semiconsonants: kwojajo


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## francisgranada

Orlin said:


> I think we should decide what criterion we should use to define consonant clusters/groups of consonants: spelling or pronunciation (you see that there's a problem with *syllabic* consonatns - they're usually if not always accompanied by weak non-phonemic vowels not recorded in conventional spelling).


 
I'd say rather 'spelling' in this case (but other problems may arise with writing systems that do not denote vowels as separate letters or characters).


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## jazyk

> So the record in Slovak, for the moment, are 6 consonants .


Czech has čtvrthrst (9!) meaning a quarter of a handful. If you consider it a compound, there is scvrnkls (8), meaning you flicked (marbles) together.


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## apmoy70

Greek has a maximum of two consonants in a single cluster and there doesn't exist a single Greek word without vowels.
These consonant clusters can be formed by:
1/ Two nasals; i.e. «*μν*άομαι» ('mnăŏmæ)-->_ to be mindful_
2/ Two plosives; i.e. «*βδ*έλλα» ('bdĕllă)-->_ leech_, or in the Modern language 
3/ Two fricatives, «*βδ*έλλα» ('vðela)-->_ leech
_4/ Combination of bilabial+alveolar, i.e. «*πσ*υχὴ-*ψ*υχὴ» (psū'xē)-->_ soul, butterfly*
_5/ Combination of velar+alveolar, i.e. «*κσ*ένος-*ξ*ένος ('ksĕnŏs)--> _stranger, wanderer*_.
Another characteristic of the consonant cluster in Greek is the consonant harmony (assimilation, sandhi etc); i.e. «ἔν»+«λόγος»(ĕn+lŏgŏs)--> «ἔ*λλ*ογος» ('ĕllŏgŏs)-->_ with logic, rational_; «ἔν»+«ῥὶς» (ĕn+rhīs)--> «ἔ*ῤῥ*ινος» ('ĕrrhīnŏs)-->_ with the nose, nasal_; «συν»+«πάθος» (sun+'pātʰŏs)--> «συ*μπ*άθεια» (sŭm'pătʰeiă)-->_ empathy, sympathy

*_ξ and ψ in Greek are considered as_ double consonants
_


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## francisgranada

An addition to the Hungarian:

At the beginning of the word, no consonant clusters are possible at all (later loanwords are exceptions).


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## Istriano

_Continental Portuguese is full of consonant clusters (in the spoken form). Therefore, many Brazilians have problem understanding it.
And the fact that Portuguese people say: ''we don't clip our vowels but pronounce them as shwa's or i's does not help'',
when in fact, most of the times that shwa is produced only is slow speech (and __no Portuguese speaks slow.)_
_
Now when I don't expect any vowels in unstressed position (except a, postress i and prestress o) I can understand them better.


In Lisbon Portuguese_:

_if you (happen to) lose:_
*se perderes* _sprderʃ

__if you fail to understand:_
*se desperceberes* _sd__ʃ__prsberʃ_  (7 consonants in a row in fast speech*) 
_

verities
_*as verdades*_ ɐ__ʃ__vrdadʃ

(*of course all sylabic R's can be interpreted as a sequence: shwa +alveolar r)

__disobstructing_ 
_*desobstruentes* dzub__ʃtru_ẽ_t__ʃ
_
In Brazilian Portuguese, vowel clipping is a relatively recent phenomenon:_
med*i*cina _pronounced as _medcina
bás*i*co pronounced as basco
cap*i*tal pronounced as captal
dent*e* [dentchi] _pronounced as_ dentch
dent*e*s _pronounced _as dents




As for spelling,  -BSTR-, -DSTR- with 4 consonants would be maximum we expect in Portuguese.

*
Nevertheless, consonants clusters should be discussed from the phonetic point (pronunciation), and not orthographic or phonologic. 
When you see a Scottish name Kirk, the way this name is pronounced in Scottish English sounds just like the name of the island of Krk as pronounced in Slovenian and B,C,S.
*
_*Kirk *(Scottish English) = * Krk *(SBC) = [kəɾk] 
*curve *(Scottish English) = *krv *(SBC) =  [kəɾv]


*Zelenortska republika* (The republic of Cape Verde)

['zeleno*əɾ*tska ɾe'publika] and not
['zeleno*ɾ*tska ɾe'publika]

_ze-le-no-rt-ska _ (and not  _ze-le-nort-ska_)


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## Gavril

In Armenian, I believe that words can end with at least 4 consonants:

_kurck'_ "breast", where the letter _c_ = [ts])

But at the beginning of a word, Armenian (or at least Western Armenian) tends not to have consonant clusters: for example, the word _skancheli_ "splendid" is written as if it began with the consonant cluster _sk-_, but in fact, a schwa is pronounced between the _s_ and the _k_. Similarly, many words seem to begin with _n_- + another consonant -- e.g., _nshan_ "sign", _npatak_ "intention" -- but the pronunciations I'm familiar with have a schwa after the _n_.


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## Black4blue

olaszinho said:


> Italian has a few words of Latin origin with 4 consonants such as: su*bstr*ato. Take a look at this Italian word with 6 vowels: cuoiaio/tanner. To be honest, I have to say that three of them sound like semiconsonants: kwojajo



Turkish has the word su*bstr*at too. So I can say 4 consonants.


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## vianie

jazyk said:


> Czech has čtvrthrst (9!) meaning a quarter of a handful. If you consider it a compound, there is scvrnkls (8), meaning you flicked (marbles) together.


 
In connection with *štvrťhrsť *I can think of another nice word that we have both - *priehrštie* / *přehršle *.

And for those who don't know: Slovak is the specialist for the long *ŕ* and *ĺ *which ones may occur also in so called consonant clusters - *vzbĺknuť* (to inflame), *stŕpnuť *(to numb) .


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## Tjahzi

There are synthetic examples of Swedish words containing up to five consecutive (non-sonorant) consonants in final position, such as _Västkustskt_, containing the parts _väst-kust-sk-t_, west-coast-[adjective maker]-[neuter gender] (_Of/pertaining to the west coast_). 

Similar examples can be found in compound nouns, but only with a maximum of four consecutive obstruents (+ a sonorant).


I think that for the comparison to be relevant, we should be focusing on obstruents, due to the reasons put forward by Orlin.


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## Orlin

Tjahzi said:


> I think that for the comparison to be relevant, we should be focusing on obstruents, due to the reasons put forward by Orlin.


I think we should only eliminate combinations containing *syllabic* sonorants because not all sonorants part of a cluster are syllabic (moreover, many languages have no syllabic sonorants at all).


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## Tjahzi

Fair enough. If we can establish which sonorant is syllabic and which is not, that's indeed a suitable solution. 

(That said, I think _most consecutive obstruents_ is an interesting discipline of its own.)


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## Frieder

[Moderator's Note: Merged with a previous thread]
The German language is renowned and dreaded for its abundance of consonant clusters. One of the most popular is _Angstschweiß _which seems to have eight consonants in a row. But it really has only five of them (_ŋstʃv_).

Now I'm looking for words that really do exist – I'm aware that in some languages (German among them) you could build grammatically correct words that don't make too much sense (_Papstsprung_) but nevertheless have six *pronounced *consonants in a row.

Here are some genuine German examples:

Dampfstrahl (_mpfʃtr_)
Kunstsprache (_nstʃpr_)
Sumpfpflanze (_mpfpfl_)
Zukunftspläne (_nftspl/mpftspl_)

So, how about your language – or languages you know. Are there similar clusters in everday words? I mean spoken consonants, mind you. Let me see those monsters!


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## Mori.cze

Czech has some potential in this respect: there is a perfectly valid word "čtvrthrst" (quarter, čtvrt, of handful, hrst). All the consonants are pronounced, č corresponds to German tsch or English ch, r's are syllabic. 

There can be whole sentences constructed with little to no wovels, e.g. "vlk strhl srně srst", a wolf ripped some fur of a roe deer.


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## Frieder

Mori.cze said:


> perfectly valid word "čtvrthrst"


Thank you for this one . But what does it mean? A quarter handful? A handful of quarters? And is it a commonplace term? 

That's why I mentioned _Papstsprung_: it is a valid word but it doesn't make much sense (pope jump). I'm looking for perfectly ordinary words here.


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## Mori.cze

Both čtvrt, 1/4, and hrst, handful, are common. Connecting them is admittedly stretching it a bit, though I believe it was indeed used in some old cookbooks for amount of ingredience. 

Without any stretching whatsoever I can give you a diminutive of 1/4, "čtvrtka".


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## Dymn

Catalan doesn't have such long consonant clusters as German or the Slavic languages. The longest ones in medial position are CSCL, i.e., consonant, /s/, consonant and liquid (/l/ or /ɾ/). There's no secret, these words are latinisms which also exist in English (like _co*nstr*uir_, or _e*xcl*oure_). Spanish also has them (_co*nstr*uir_ and _e*xcl*uir_ for example). In final position Catalan is more permissive than Spanish, allowing up to 4 consonants (like _te*xts*_), even if nowadays most people say _textos_, to ease pronunciation.


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## Rani_Author

jazyk said:


> Czech has čtvrthrst (9!) meaning a quarter of a handful. If you consider it a compound, there is scvrnkls (8), meaning you flicked (marbles) together.



That's a nightmare for learners with the Austronesian mother tongues.  For us, the German and Dutch consonants like "cht", "schl", "cyzk" are so hard to pronounce. Moreover, the Slavic ones. 

If some of us are succeeded to speak perfectly in German, Dutch, or Slavic ones, usually we can't speak well anymore in Austronesian languages. It's just like we should reverse our tongues.

Austronesian ones have no hard consonant clusters like that.

Indonesian and Malayan just allowed the consonant clusters like that: any kind of consonants are followed by “H or/and R or/and Y”, "S" is followed by any consonants, & “N” is followed by “G or GG”.

So, Indonesian and Malayan just could allow three consonants, like *Chr*ist, "ma*ngg*a (manggo)", etc.

In Tetun, just "NH", "LL", and "K" is followed by "L/M/N". So, two consonants. Like: ma*nh*a (guile), Ju*ll*u (July), *km*anek (good, beautiful, awesome), etc. But, recently, the "NH" and "LL" have been removed and have been changed become "Ñ" and "LY".


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## spindlemoss

sarcie said:


> Have we no Welsh-speakers on the forum?  To use a much-dragged-up example:
> *Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch*
> (Welsh village)



*W* and *y* are actually vowels in Welsh, and *ch* and *ll *are single consonants in the Welsh alphabet. So although it looks like that place name has clusters of 10 or 14 consonants, the maximum number is actually 4:

*Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch*


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## franknagy

Mutichou said:


> Could you explain how you can pronounce words with no vowels? I'm also curious about Georgian words.


The explanation is simple: in some languages R and L are treated as vowels.


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## franknagy

The consonat clusters are avoided in Hungarian, too.
There are few exceptions, mainly loanwords from English? Swedish or German:

prompt
strand
strucc
angström

sprint

gengszter

sztráda


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## AutumnOwl

Sandstrandsspringare - sandy beach runner, maybe not so often used  but sandstrand is a common compound word.


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## franknagy

AutumnOwl said:


> Sandstrandsspringare - sandy beach runner, maybe not so often used  but sandstrand is a common compound word.


If the composed word are allowed then here is a Hungarian monster:
Moszkvicsslusszkulcs = ignition key of a Moskvich car.


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## Frieder

In German there is the Arztsprechstunde (a physician's consultation hours). This little cluster is pronounced [rtstʃpr].


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