Dutch phonology

Consonants

Obstruents

• The glottal stop is not a phoneme because it occurs only optionally in a few specific predictable environments:
• * It always separates and other vowels.
• * It often occurs at the beginning of vowel-initial words after a pause.
• ** Moreso when separate vowel articulations are present within words. And even more common in the case of compounds where both elements have the same vowel at the syllable-boundary.
• Stops:
• * Voiceless: Unlike in English and German, Dutch's are unaspirated word initially: both English tip and German Tipp are, but Dutch tip is with an unaspirated.
• * Voiced:
• ** and are fully voiced.
• ** is not a native phoneme of Dutch and occurs only in loanwords like goal but is analyzed as a phoneme because minimal pairs exist: goal and kool . Additionally, in native words, occurs as an allophone of when it undergoes regressive voicing assimilation like in zakdoek.
• * /Pj/:
• ** In onsets, the sequence is commonly realised as a tenuis alveolo-palatal affricate, or intervocalically as a stop or fricative, barring some loanwords and names.
• ** In onsets, the sequence is commonly realised as a tenuis alveolo-palatal affricate, or intervocalically as a stop or fricative, barring some loanwords and names.
• ** The sequence is often realised as a voiceless post-palatal affricate.
• Fricatives:
• * Voicing:
• ** In the Netherlands, can devoice and merge with. According to, hardly any speakers of Northern Standard Dutch consistently contrast with.
• ** In low-prestige varieties of Netherlandic Dutch can also devoice and merge with.
• ** Speakers who devoice and may also hypercorrectively voice and : concert "concert" may thus be compared to the more usual.
• ** Some speakers pronounce as a voiceless.
• * Coronal:
• ** In the Netherlands, and may have only mid-to-low pitched friction, and for many Netherlandic speakers, they are retracted. In Belgium, they are more similar to English.
• ** The sequences and are often assimilated to palatalised, alveolo-palatal, postalveolar or similar realisations.
• ** are not native phonemes of Dutch and usually occur only in borrowed words like show and bagage "baggage". Depending on the speaker and the position in the word, they may or may not be distinct from the assimilated realisations of the clusters. If they are not distinct, they have the same range of realisations as noted above.
• * Dorsal
• ** In the north, is often realised the same as ; the quality of that merged sound has been variously described as a voiceless post-velar or uvular fricative. Popularly, this is called harde g. Although they share a common phone, the two phenemes aren't said to have merged as the past tense suffix, whose voicing status is determined by the previous consonant's, still bases itself on the underlying phonemes, e.g. + -e > loogde but + -e > lachte.
• ** In the south, the distinction between and is generally preserved as velar or post-palatal. Some southern speakers may alternate between the velar and post-palatal articulation, depending on the backness of the preceding or succeeding vowel. Often referred to as zachte g.
• ** In Zeeland and West Flanders, there is also a third variant, called zwakke harde g, in which is realised as and is realised as. They are h-dropping areas, so does not merge with glottal variants of and.
• ** Some dialects, particularly those from the southwest, exhibit h-dropping.

  Sonorants

• Nasals assimilate in the following manner. This also occurs across word-boundaries in allegro speech and may not happen word internally when over enunciating:
• * and to a following labial obstruent:
• ** before bilabials they merge into.
• ** before labio-dentals they merge into.
• * to a following dorsal consonants:
• ** before velars, it merges with.
• ***The realisation of in turn depends on how a following velar fricative is realised. For example, it is uvular for speakers who realise as uvulars.
• ** before palatals,, -assimilated and loan introduced-, it is realised as.
• varies mostly according to regional dialect:
• * In central and northern Netherlands, it is a labiodental approximant or even a voiced labiodental fricative.
• * Speakers in southern Netherlands and Belgium use a bilabial approximant. It is like but without velarisation.
• ** may join the allophony.
• * In Suriname and among immigrant populations, is common.
• The exact pronunciation of varies regionally:
• * In the North, is 'clear' before vowels and 'dark' before consonants and pauses. Intervocalic tends to be clear except after the open back vowels. However, some speakers use the dark variant in all intervocalic contexts.
• * Some accents, such as in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, have dark in all positions. Conversely, some accents in the eastern regions, along the German border, as well as some speakers of Standard Belgian, have clear in all contexts.
• * The quality of dark varies:
• ** In the North, it is pharyngealised, e.g..
• *** In a final position, many of such speakers produce a strongly pharyngealised vocoid with no alveolar contact instead,.
• ** In Belgium, it is either velarised, e.g. ; or post-palatalised, e.g..
• * Palatal may appear before.
• varies considerably from dialect to dialect and even between speakers in the same dialect area:
• * Coronal realisations are the historical pronunciation of the phoneme, spearheaded by the alveolar trill and the alveolar tap as common allophone.
• ** Fricative realisation can also nowadays be heard: , authors do not say where exactly it is used; word finally and before /s/, is not uncommon, e.g.
• * Uvular continuants are rising in popularity, the uvular trill serving as flagship. It is found particularly in the central and southern dialect areas and increasingly in the Randstad. e.g..
• ** The coastal dialects of South Holland produce a voiced uvular fricative.
• ** In the center of the country, more specifically in Amsterdam and especially Nijmegen, as well as in Flanders, the voiced uvular approximant is a minority.
• ** Syllable-finally, they may be vocalised to, much as in German, which is more common in the eastern areas, e.g..
• * The velar bunched approximant is found at the end of a syllable in the pronunciation of some speakers in the Netherlands, especially those from the Randstad, but not in Belgium. Its use has been increasing in recent years. e.g.
• * Other variants include in North Brabant and North Holland.

Final devoicing and assimilation