# Word-final consonants



## Dymn

Now let's talk about phonology. Among the phonological inventory of your language, which consonants can be placed word-finally natively? Add semivowels too.

Most *Catalan* sounds can be placed at the end of a word, unlike most other Romance languages. All consonants that can't be at the end are voiced:
Possible word-final consonants: /ʧ f j k l ʎ m n ŋ ɲ p r s ʃ t w/
Impossible word-final consonants: /b d dz ʤ g z ʒ/

Edit: For the sake of simplicity, read words as if they were alone. If you add other words after the final consonant the sound may change. For example in Catalan [s ] becomes [z] when the next words begins with a vowel, but I don't count it.


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## rusita preciosa

I'm not 100% understand what you mean by "placed", but in Russian voiced final consonants become devoiced (*b* is pronounced as* p*; *z *as *s*, *d *as* t *etc...). So technically there are no words that end on 'b/z/d/v' even if they are spelled that way.

If the word is followed by another word (e.g. beginning with a vowel),  the devoicing does not happen.


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## M Mira

/n ŋ/
---The End---

Though there may be more, depends on region and analysis:

Beijing dialect:
"er" is not pronounced as ɚ but ɑɻ, so add /ɻ/

Alternative analysis of "empty rimes":
[ɯ] and [ɨ] are considered to be the phonemes /z/ and /ɻ/

Analyze diphthongs as semivowels:
Add /j/, /w/


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## Dymn

rusita preciosa said:


> I'm not 100% understand what you mean by "placed", but in Russian voiced final consonants become devoiced (*b* is pronounced as* p*; *z *as *s*, *d *as* t *etc...). So technically there are no words that end on 'b/z/d/v' even if they are spelled that way.
> 
> If the word is followed by another word (e.g. beginning with a vowel),  the devoicing does not happen.


In Catalan this (de)voicing depending on whether the following words starts with a vowel or not also happens between [s ] and [z]. However, to keep it simple, I would only consider consonant sounds as in words pronunced alone. So in Russian, [b d g] wouldn't be placed word finally, I guess.


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## ger4

In German (native words), these consonants cannot appear word-finally: / b d g h j ʀ z v /

Consequently, some letters change their pronunciation in word-final position:
b /b/ > /p/
d /d/ > /t/
g /g/ > /k/ or /ç/ in the suffix -ig
h /h/ > /-/
r /ʀ/ > /ʁ/
s /z/ > /s/


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## Encolpius

Diamant7 said:


> ...which consonants can be placed word-finally natively? Add semivowels too..



*Hungarian *--- all consonants can be placed at the end [we have trouble with vowels ]


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## apmoy70

Greek:

In MoGr word-final consonants are *«-ν»* /n/ and *«-ς»* (final sigma) /s/; foreign loanwords may end with different consonants (e.g *«Αδάμ»* [aˈðam] (Adam), *«Μωάμεθ»* [moˈameθ] (Muhammad), *«σoφέρ»* [soˈfer] (chauffeur) etc).
Interjections (or exclamations) may end with *«-χ»* /x/ (e.g. *«ωχ!»* [ox] --> _ouch!_, *«αχ!»* [ax] --> _aw! ack!_).
In Classical Greek, word-final consonants were also the *«-κ»* /k/ (e.g. *«ἐκ» ĕk* (adv. and prep.) --> _out_), *«-ρ»* /r/ (e.g. *«ἔαρ» éar* (fem.) --> _Spring_), *«-ξ»* /k͡s/ (e.g. *«ἅπαξ» hápak͡s* (adv.) --> _once_), *«-ψ»* /p͡s/ (e.g. *«ὤψ» ṓp͡s* (fem.) --> _eye, face, countenance_).


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## Dymn

*Spanish*: /n s ɾ l (θ ð x)/
/θ/ doesn't exist in Latin American Spanish, it merged with /s/
/ð/ in final position is usually omitted in most of Spain, or devoiced to [θ]
/x/ only appears word-finally in the word _reloj _"clock"
On the other hand, /s/ reflexes as [h] in codas in some dialects such as Southern Spanish, Argentinian and Caribbean.
Spanish doesn't allow two-consonant clusters in word-final position.

*European Portuguese*: /ʃ ɾ ɫ/
Nasals surface in the previous vowel.
This is the full pronunciation, but it's ever more rare in Portugal to pronounce final _-e _(and sometimes also _-o_) which leaves all consonants possible word-finally.

*Italian*: /n ɾ l/
These consonants are only found word-finally in monosyllabic grammar words or apocopic forms for euphony, e.g. _voler dire_.

*Basque*: /n k t s̻ ts̻ r l/

*Finnish*: /n t s (r l)/
Word-final /r/ and /l/ are found in a few words see #9

*Japanese*: /n/

*Korean*: /m n ŋ p̚ t̚ k̚ l/


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## Armas

Dymn said:


> *Finnish*: /n t s/



There is also a small number of words ending in /r/ and /l/, e.g. _manner_ "continent", _nivel_ "joint". These words often have an alternative nominative form ending in e, e.g. _askar_ -> _askare_; _kannel_ -> _kantele_.


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## Dymn

In native *Indonesian *words: /m n ŋ p t ʔ h s r l/

Voiced consonants and palatals are missing word-finally.



Armas said:


> There is also a small number of words ending in /r/ and /l/, e.g. _manner_ "continent", _nivel_ "joint". These words often have an alternative nominative form ending in e, e.g. _askar_ -> _askare_; _kannel_ -> _kantele_.


Thanks! I'm adding it!


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## ilocas2

Czech:

m n ɲ p t c k ts tʃ f s ʃ x r̝̊ r j l


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## Red Arrow

I will leave out both [w] and [j].

*Dutch:*
Possible: / m n ŋ p t k f s x l r /
Impossible: / b d ɣ ɦ v z ʋ ʃ ʒ /

[ɦ] doesn't occor word-final. [ʃ] will only be found word-final in certain loanwords.
The other consonants get devoiced.

*French:*
Possible: / m n p t k f s ʃ v z ʒ ʁ l /
Impossible: / b d g ɲ ɥ /

Voiced plosives as well as [ɲ] get followed by a short schwa.
[ɥ] only occurs before [ i ].


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## Penyafort

It is funny how sometimes you can guess the origin of a non-native English speaker only by this trait, as English is probably one of the European languages that admit a wider range of final consonants in a word.


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## Ghabi

In traditional Chinese phonology, a syllable, depending on its final, is either:

- "Yin" 陰: zero, w, y
- "Yang" 陽: m, n, ng
- "Entering" 入: p, t, k (unreleased plosives)

As applied to Cantonese:

- zaa1 渣, zau1 周, zai1 劑
- zam1 針, zan1真, zang1 憎
- zap1 執, zat1 質, zak1 則


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## merquiades

Maybe it would be a good idea to make a difference between finally consonants that are fully released and those that aren't.  For example, when English _hat_ is pronounced the final -t is swallowed and not firmly released and the tongue is not even raised to the palate.  However, when _hâte_ is pronounced in French the final -t is firmly released and there is no difference in articulation from when it is at the beginning of the word.  The result when English speakers say hâte the French natives hear hâa? and in English the French speakers sound like they are not saying a final consonant at all and are adding a second syllable  hat.. euh.


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## sound shift

merquiades said:


> Maybe it would be a good idea to make a difference between finally consonants that are fully released and those that aren't.  For example, when English _hat_ is pronounced the final -t is swallowed and not firmly released and the tongue is not even raised to the palate.


I'd say this depends on the variety of English. In Ireland and a swathe of central-northern England, final -t in _hat _is released.


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## Ghabi

The English final plosives can be pronounced either released or unreleased. On the other hand, Cantonese final plosives are *always* unreleased.


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## Dymn

Ghabi said:


> - zaa1 渣, zau1 周, zai1 劑
> - zam1 針, zan1真, zang1 憎
> - zap1 執, zat1 質, zak1 則


So Cantonese keeps all the traditional Chinese finals, while Mandarin deletes stops and merges /m/ into /n/. What do other Chinese languages do? I've read Mandarin is the most innovative in this aspect.

@merquiades I think there's a difference between T-glottalization and unreleased stops.

T-glottalization is a specifically English phenomenon where final /t/ is pronounced as a glottal stop [ʔ], the tongue isn't even raised to the palate as you say. I don't know how common this is, but I often hear it in songs and films. In Indonesian this happens with final /k/ (see #10).

Unreleased stops are a different phenomena that can take place with all stops and are very common in languages in East Asia. I don't fully understand it though.


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## Ghabi

Dymn said:


> So Cantonese keeps all the traditional Chinese finals


We don't really know what all the finals are. A final -r or -l has long been proposed (for "Old Chinese" or "Early Middle Chinese") in order to explain some odd phenomena. But both Cantonese and Hakka keep the "Middle Chinese" set of finals (n, m, ng, t, p, k).


> I don't fully understand it though.


One can compare, for example, English <suck> (forvo sample) and Cantonese sak1 塞 (forvo sample).


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## sound shift

Dymn said:


> Unreleased stops are a different phenomena that can take place with all stops and are very common in languages in East Asia


... and in English. There are three renditions of final -t in English: released, unreleased and glottal stop.


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## Dymn

sound shift said:


> ... and in English. There are three renditions of final -t in English: released, unreleased and glottal stop.


What are their distributions? I mean across dialects or sociolects?


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## sound shift

That's pretty complex and beyond me, I'm afraid. Knowing this forum, though, I expect someone will be able to answer your question.


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## Dymn

Ghabi said:


> One can compare, for example, English <suck> (forvo sample) and Cantonese sak1 塞 (forvo sample).


Yes, the difference in pronunciation is clear, what I don't understand is exactly how one produces unreleased stops.


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## Dymn

More languages:

*Vietnamese*: /m n ŋ p̚ t̚ k̚/
*Thai*: /m n ŋ p̚ t̚ k̚/
(the same as Cantonese)

*Telugu*: /m n/

*Romanian*: all consonants except for /tʃ dʒ/, and their palatalized equivalents

*Arabic*: all consonants
*Persian*: all consonants


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## franknagy

Encolpius said:


> *Hungarian *--- all consonants can be placed at the end [we have trouble with vowels ]


Currenty. Thousand or more years ago all Hungarian worrds ended with wovels, just like Russain words. The so called "binding vowels" show these extict final ones.


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## elroy

Dymn said:


> *Arabic*: all consonants


This is striking because Arabic has a pretty sizable consonant inventory (28 consonant phonemes).  Some are pretty challenging to pronounce word-finally for non-native speakers even if they can pronounce them in other positions.  For example:

/h/ as in وجه /waʒh/ "face" or وجوه /wuʒu:h/
/ʔ/ as in شيء /ʃajʔ/ "thing" or سماء /sama:ʔ/ "sky" 
/w/ following a consonant as in عضو /ʕudˁw/ "member" 
/j/ following a consonant as in ظبي /ðˤabj/ "antelope"

If you're curious how these sound, here's me saying them.


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## Dymn

Yes, Arabic seems to allow any (almost any?) two-consonant combination word-finally. Some are quite a mouthful to say...


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## elroy

Dymn said:


> Arabic seems to allow any (almost any?) two-consonant combination word-finally.


“almost any” might be right, but definitely not “any.”  For example, حع /ħʕ/ is not allowed.


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## Welsh_Sion

*Cymraeg/Welsh*

/b k X d ð v f g ŋ h ʤ l ł m n p r s ʃ t ɵ ʧ [z]/

can all come at the end of Welsh words.

/z/ is a pluralising morpheme, limited to Southern Welsh and is considered non-standard.


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## sound shift

*Turkish*

/f h dʒ k l m n p r s ʃ tʃ t v z/


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## merquiades

sound shift said:


> I'd say this depends on the variety of English. In Ireland and a swathe of central-northern England, final -t in _hat _is released.





Dymn said:


> So Cantonese keeps all the traditional Chinese finals, while Mandarin deletes stops and merges /m/ into /n/. What do other Chinese languages do? I've read Mandarin is the most innovative in this aspect.
> 
> @merquiades I think there's a difference between T-glottalization and unreleased stops.
> 
> T-glottalization is a specifically English phenomenon where final /t/ is pronounced as a glottal stop [ʔ], the tongue isn't even raised to the palate as you say.


I responded years ago I should have picked another final consonant instead of -t.    I was not refering to glottalizing per se.  
English cap/ French cap,  English bag/ French bague,  English sad/ French Sade, English sack/ French sac,  English chef/ French chef.   We are tempted to think that these words are close to being pronounced the same in both languages.  Even more so, we can say they end in pronounced final consonants.  But in reality these words sound very different.  In English the consonant is not released and the articulation is lax.   In French, the articulation is tense just as if it were the beginning of a word and is strongly released.  English speakers here another syllable ending in schwa.

We've got to take this into account when talking about final consonants.  From one person's point of view French could maybe be seen as having no final consonants, just schwas and other vowels.  From another point of view English final consonants could be seen as not fully pronounced or mumbled. 
I guess it's important to know what type of final consonants people mean when they say here that they exist in Turkish, Welsh, Arabic, Romanian... this beyond them being voiced or unvoiced.
I think German has the English closed, swallowed kind, whereas Italian whenever there are consonants adds the French schwa.
I bet there is a language out there that has both unreleased and fully released final consonants, and maybe even minimal pairs.


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## Olaszinhok

Italian is pretty unique as far as final consonants are concerned because almost every word ends in a vowel, but there are some exceptions, in addition to some common foreign words, such as:  _bar, lockdown, sketch,Scotch,smoking_ and so on.
Possible final consonants are:
*l, n, m r,* especially with prepositions, articles and when we apocopate a word:
*sul, dal con 
un bel *quadro
*cuor *di leone
ingegn*er* Rossi
Sign*or* Giovanni
dov*er *dire
vu_*ol*_ dire
abbi*am* fatto
ha*n* detto
liber*al*-socialista
am*or* mio
a par*er* mio  and so forth.
Traditionally, in old Italian and poetry possible final consonants are more.


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## elroy

What about “nord” and “sud”?  I guess those are borrowings (from German?), but somehow they feel different from “lockdown” and “smoking.”


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## Olaszinhok

elroy said:


> What about “nord” and “sud”? I guess those are borrowings (from German?),


Italian borrowed them from old French but they should have a Germanic origin.
We also have other final consonants when we use the apostrophe but the two words are pronounced as a single one:
quest'uomo
grand'uomo
d'altronde


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## Terio

In French, all the 17 consonants may occur at the end of a word. Most of the time, a final written e is totally mute.

The semi-consonants [w] and [ɥ] do not occur at the end of words.


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## Red Arrow

Red Arrow said:


> Voiced plosives as well as [ɲ] get followed by a short schwa.


The part about voiced plosives is wrong. My (Flemish) French teachers spoke like that, but it seems like speakers from Wallonia and France don't.


Red Arrow said:


> [ɥ] only occurs before [ i ].


This is also wrong. (Shows how Belgian I am)

In French, words like "tuer" are pronounced /tɥe/.

In Belgian French, "nuit" sounds like [nwi] and tuer sounds the way it is spelled: [tye]. (However, there is a slight glide between the two. Not sure if it's [ɥ] or [w])

The only glide allowed at the end of a word is [j].


Terio said:


> In French, all the 17 consonants may occur at the end of a word. Most of the time, a final written e is totally mute.


Yes, most of the time, but never in -gne words. Compare une cigogne and une abeille. There is clearly a short schwa in the first word.

So the only consonants that are not allowed word-finally are: */w ɥ ɳ/.*


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## Terio

Red Arrow said:


> The part about voiced plosives is wrong. My (Flemish) French teachers spoke like that, but it seems like speakers from Wallonia and France don't.
> 
> This is also wrong. (Shows how Belgian I am)
> 
> In French, words like "tuer" are pronounced /tɥe/.


It is by now way systematic. Some people prononce [ty-e] (two syllables), some  [tɥe] (one syllable). The same thing happen in nuage [nu-aᴣ] or [nɥaᴣ], bio [bi-o] or [bjo], mouette [mu-ɛt] our [mwɛt]. In Quebec, _tuer_ has a glide, the other ones have a full vowell.



Red Arrow said:


> In Belgian French, "nuit" sounds like [nwi] and tuer sounds the way it is spelled: [tye]. (However, there is a slight glide between the two. Not sure if it's [ɥ] or [w])
> 
> The only glide allowed at the end of a word is [j].
> 
> Yes, most of the time, but never in -gne words. Compare une cigogne and une abeille. There is clearly a short schwa in the first word.


I pronounce it : [sigᴐɲ]. The consonant [ɲ] is slowly disappearing in European French, replaced by [nj] but still alive in Quebec.



Red Arrow said:


> So the only consonants that are not allowed word-finally are: */w ɥ ɳ/.*


[ɲ] is allowed in the classical prononciation : vigne, campagne, rogne, beigne, etc. People who replace it by [nj] in words like agneau [anjo] instead of the classical [aɲo], I'm not sure how the manage it at the end of a word. [nj] sounds pretty strange in that position.


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## Sobakus

Terio said:


> [ɲ] is allowed in the classical prononciation : vigne, campagne, rogne, beigne, etc. People who replace it by [nj] in words like agneau [anjo] instead of the classical [aɲo], I'm not sure how the manage it at the end of a word. [nj] sounds pretty strange in that position.


This perfectly explains this comment:


Red Arrow said:


> Yes, most of the time, but never in -gne words. Compare une cigogne and une abeille. There is clearly a short schwa in the first word.


Those who have a consonant cluster [nj] instead of [ɲ] repair this by inserting a post-lexical schwa that adds a phonetic but not phonemic syllable. This must be because clusters are banned in French syllable-finally, and can also be observed in all those words ending in _-cre._ It seems in Quebec the last consonant is deleted instead of a schwa being inserted, at least if a third consonant follows.


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## Red Arrow

French has a lot of word-final consonant clusters. (link) Some of these clusters are avoided depending on the accent, for instance perdre /pɛʁdʁ(ə)/, prendre /pʁɑ̃dʁ(ə)/ etc.


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## Sobakus

French indeed has word-final consonant clusters, but syllable-final clusters seem to be banned, at least in non-Belgian French. Thus when these words occur in a position where the syllable boundary falls after them, the cluster needs to be simplified by either of the two strategies: schwa insertion and consonant deletion. When it sounds like there's neither, I would argue that it's simply a devoiced schwa - vowel devoicing in French is well-known. The presence of that schwa can be detected in that characteristic French final -s which is extra long, exactly the duration of a syllable. From this I think it's safe to conclude that the schwa is obsorbed into it, effectively making it syllabic; the same optionally happens with cluster-final liquids /r/ and /l/.

A litmus test here is simply adding a third consonant such that the syllable boundary falls between the word-final cluster and that next word-initial consonant. The schwa reliably surfaces again as soon as you do this; if not, the medial consonant is deleted, as seems to be standard in Quebecois.


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