Hard and soft G in Dutch
In the Dutch language, hard and soft G refers to a phonetic phenomenon of the pronunciation of the letters and and also a major isogloss within that language.
In southern dialects of Dutch, the distinction between the phonemes and is usual, with both realized as cardinal velars or post-palatal, hereafter represented without the diacritics. The allophony between those two types of fricatives is termed soft G in Dutch dialectology.
In northern dialects of Dutch, the distinction is not consistent and is best described as a fortis–lenis contrast, rather than a contrast of voicing. In those varieties, and are no more front than cardinal velars, with usually being uvular:., if distinct from, is typically a voiceless velar fricative. This is termed hard G in Dutch dialectology. It is also used in Afrikaans, so that the Afrikaans word goed 'good' has the same pronunciation as in Northern Dutch, in addition to having the same meaning in both languages.
Pronunciation
Southern
In Southern Dutch, the phonemes and are either cardinal velars or post-palatal. More specifically, post-palatals occur in contact with phonemic front vowels and, whereas the cardinal velars occur in contact with phonemic back vowels. The phonemes usually contrast by voicing, but can be devoiced to a lenis that differs from in a less energetic articulation. Verhoeven and Hageman have found that 70% of word-initial and 56% of intervocalic lenis fricatives are realized as fully voiceless in Belgium. In Maastrichtian Limburgish, initial is often partially devoiced as well.In many cases, still patterns as an obstruent, an allophone of in Ripuarian. The plural form zeëje 'saws' has an underlying : because it alternates with a voiceless fricative in the root zeëg 'saw', phonemically. Compare this with the alternation in vroag 'question' - vroage 'questions'. This is a typical feature of Ripuarian. This merger is also not phonemic as too is a sonorant and thus cannot participate in alternations such as - mentioned above.