Key for standard Catalan and Valencian

Other transcriptions

Further dialectal variation

See also

Notes

1. ^^abcdefghijObstruentsassimilate to the voicing of the following consonant. Insyllables produced in utterance-final position (i.e. thecoda),voiced obstruents becomedevoiced (Carbonell Costa & Llisterri Boix (1999:63),Wheeler (2005:147–149)).
2. ^^abcdefgWhilebetacism (that is, the merging of/b/ and/v/ into one phoneme) is common in most speakers of Catalan and in Valencia, severaldialects still contrast the two sounds (usually represented as⟨b⟩ and⟨v⟩ respectively inCatalan orthography). The contrast is also maintained in Standard Valencian (Carbonell Costa & Llisterri Boix (1999:61),Wheeler (2005:13)).
3. ^^abcdefghijVoicedstops/b,d,ɡ/ becomelenited [β,ð,ɣ] (that is,approximants orfricatives of the same place of articulation) when in the syllable onset and after acontinuant. Otherwise they are pronounced asvoiced ordevoiced stops, similar to Englishb,d,g andp,t,k. Exceptions include/d/ after alateral consonant, and/b/ after the labiodental/f/. In traditional non-betacist dialects,/b/ usually fails to lenite (Carbonell Costa & Llisterri Boix (1999:63),Wheeler (2005:10, 310–326)).
   • [β] (found only in the betacist varieties) is pronounced between/b/ and/v/, or just like/v/ but with both lips.
   • [ɣ] is pronounced between/ɡ/ and/h/, or roughly like/ɡ/ but without completely blocking the air flow.
4. ^^{abcdefghijklmnopqrs}Thesibilants/ʃ,ʒ,tʃ,dʒ/ arealveolo-palatal orpalato-alveolar. A variant of/s,z,ts,dz/ includes theretracted[s̠,z̠,t̠s̠,d̠z̠] (with pronunciations closer to postalveolars/ʃ,ʒ,tʃ,dʒ/, respectively).
5. ^^abCatalan orthography distinguishes between⟨ll⟩ (representing/ʎ/) and⟨ŀl⟩ (representing ageminated/lː/). In regular speech gemination of⟨ŀl⟩ is ignored altogether. Some dialects as well as young speakers can merge/ʎ/ with the glide[j] in a process similar to Spanishyeísmo.
6. ^^abcdefgThesonorants/l/ and/n/assimilate to theplace of articulation of a following consonant (Rafel (1999:14),Wheeler (2005:166–204)). Beforepalatals,/l/ is[ʎ] and/n/ is[ɲ]. Beforevelars,/n/ becomes[ŋ] and beforelabial consonants,/n/ becomes[m]. The labiodental[ɱ] appears before/f/ and/v/.
7. ^^abTherhotic consonants⟨r⟩/ɾ/ and⟨rr⟩/r/ only contrast between vowels. Otherwise, they are incomplementary distribution as⟨r⟩ with[r] occurring word-initially, after/l/,/n/, and/s/, and in compounds; and[ɾ] after hard plosives, thesoftspirants[β,ð,ɣ], and/f/. Syllable-final/ɾ/ varies according to dialect, emphasis, morpheme and the following sound. In allCatalan dialects, except most of Valencian,/ɾ/ is lost in coda position in suffixes of nouns and adjectives denoting the masculine singular and in the infinitive suffixes of verbs, except when the following morpheme begins with a vowel, although this may vary (Carbonell Costa & Llisterri Boix (1999:63–64),Wheeler (2005:24–25)).
8. ^Other than inloanwords andinterjections, the letter⟨h⟩ is alwayssilent. Non-silent⟨h⟩ often merges with/x/.
9. ^The dental fricative/θ/, found mainly in Spanish loanwords and interferences, may be replaced by/s/ by native speakers.
10. ^Thesemivowels/j/ and/w/ can be combined with most vowels to formdiphthongs andtriphthongs (Carbonell Costa & Llisterri Boix (1999:62),Wheeler (2005:90–91)). For a list with all the combinations, seeCatalan phonology § Diphthongs and triphthongs.
11. ^Many words that have/ɛ/ in Standard Catalan have/e/ in Standard Valencian. The latter is the historical pronunciation.
12. ^^abcdefghiInunstressed position, the vowel contrast isreduced in all dialects.
    • Eastern Catalan (in particular, Central and Northern Catalan):[a,ɛ,e] merge to[ə], whereas[ɔ,o,u] merge to[u], leaving only[ə,i,u] in most unstressed syllables.
      • In Standard Eastern Catalan, unstressed[e] and[o] appear only in some words, especially from other languages. In other cases, they merge with[ə] and[u] (Wheeler (2005:61–72)).
    • Western Catalan (North-Western and Valencian):[ɛ,e] merge to[e] and[ɔ,o] merge to[o]. Exceptionally there are some cases where unstressed⟨e⟩ may merge with[a] or[i], whereas unstressed⟨o⟩ may merge with[u] (Carbonell Costa & Llisterri Boix (1999:62–63),Wheeler (2005:52–77)).
      • In Standard Valencian, unstressed[ɛ] and[ɔ] occur in the process known asvowel harmony. In North-Western, there are cases where only[ɛ] is found in final unstressed syllables. (See also "Assimilations and vowel harmony in local transcriptions of Western Catalan").
      • In further cases, unstressed[ɛ] and[ɔ] may appear in compounds.
13. ^^abThe vowel/œ/—found mainly in the Northern dialects–is usually replaced by/e/ in the standard.
    • [œ] is pronounced like/ɛ/, but with the lipsrounded.
14. ^^abThe vowel/y/—found mainly in the Northern dialects–is usually replaced by/u/ or/i/ in the standard.
    • [y] is pronounced like/i/, but with the lipsrounded.

Bibliography

• Carbonell Costa, Joan F.; Llisterri Boix, Joaquim (1999), "Catalan",Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Usage of the International Phonetic Alphabet (in Catalan), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 61–65,ISBN 978-0-521-63751-0
• Jiménez, Jesús; Lloret, Maria-Rosa,Entre la articulación y la percepción: Armonía vocálica en la península Ibérica(PDF) (in Spanish)
• Rafel, Joaquim (1999),Aplicació al català dels principis de transcripció de l'Associació Fonètica Internacional(PDF) (in Catalan) (3rd ed.), Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans,ISBN 84-7283-446-8
• Recasens Vives, Daniel (1996) [1991],Fonètica descriptiva del català: assaig de caracterització de la pronúncia del vocalisme i el consonantisme català al segle XX, Biblioteca Filològica (in Catalan), vol. 21 (2nd ed.), Barcelona. Spain: Institut d'Estudis Catalans,ISBN 978-84-7283-312-8
• Wheeler, Max W. (2005),The Phonology Of Catalan, Oxford: Oxford University Press,ISBN 978-0-19-925814-7

External links