Blog

1. Did you know that some languages make important distinctions based on the length of sounds?
In many languages, sounds are differentiated by quality (how they sound) and quantity (how long they sound). While some languages don’t use sound length to distinguish meaning, some do. For example, Italian distinguishes between short consonants (like note /t/ ‘notes’) and long consonants (called geminates, such as notte /tt/ ‘night). In fact, only about 3% of the world’s languages have such long consonants as a key feature. This can make learning them tricky for people whose native languages don’t have these distinctions, like English, Czech, German or Spanish. For second-language learners, geminates often present a challenge because they require precise control over duration and are influenced by both hearing and reading factors. The project wants to find out how all this works!

Tipp: Comparing languages is fun. Find more here: https://wals.info/

2. Did you know that Italian uses long consonants to create different meanings?
As we have said above, in Italian, lengthening a consonant can change the meaning of a word. We have also seen that, for instance, note means “notes,” while notte means “night.” Such pairs of words are known as minimal pairs and the only difference (in this case) is the duration of the consonant. There are nearly 2,000 minimal pairs involving geminates in Italian! This makes geminates not only fascinating but also an important part of the language. Learning to perceive and produce them correctly is a key challenge for second-language learners!

Tipp: If you want to find further minimal pairs in Italian or other languages, visit this page: http://phonetictools.altervista.org/minimalpairfinder/

3. Did you know that Czech has “quasi-geminates”?
In Czech, only long vowels are possible and change a meaning (ji ‘her-accusative’ vs. jí ‘s/he eats’). Some double consonants occur at the boundaries of words or morphemes, like “vinný” (winey) or “měkký” (soft). These are called quasi-geminates because they aren’t phonemically distinct like true geminates but are still pronounced longer than single consonants in careful speech. Interestingly, Czech speakers are highly sensitive to vowel length but not very sensitive to consonant length. In a small pilot study, I found out that Czech speakers only partially distinguished between singletons (short consonants) and geminates (long consonants). This suggests that Czech learners might have some troubles with Italian geminates!

4. Did you know that German has a unique way of dealing with double consonants?
Same as in Czech, German has long vowels and is also full of compound words and affixations that create double consonants, like “ummelden” (to re-register) or “zahllos” (countless). These aren’t true geminates, but they do get pronounced longer than single consonants, with studies showing they can be nearly twice as long. German orthography is also interesting: it uses double letters to indicate a change in vowel (short vs. long) but not consonant length (like Nase ‘nose’ vs. nasse ‘wet’). Could the orthographic conventions in German influence how German learners pronounce geminates in Italian? Let’s prove this!

5. Did you know that Spanish does not use long sounds at all?
Spanish doesn’t use sound length to differentiate meaning at all. This makes it difficult for Spanish speakers to learn languages with (vowel or consonantal) quantity distinctions, such as German, Czech, Finnish or Italian! The few cases where Spanish does have double consonants, like “innato” (innate), are rare and typically pronounced as a single consonant in casual speech. While some Spanish dialects exhibit gemination, like “vedde” from “verde” in the Caribbean, these are not considered standard. This difference in sound system poses an additional challenge for Spanish speakers learning languages with length contrasts.

Another interesting fact is the distinction between the sounds R and RR in words such as caro (‘expensive’) and carro (‘car’). However, these are not treated as a case of gemination, but it’s actually about a single tap [ɾ] versus a trill [r]. The tap involves a quick, single contact of the tongue with the roof of the mouth, while the trill is characterized by multiple rapid vibrations.

6. Did you know that Finnish treats both vowels and consonants as long or short?
Finnish is unique among the languages discussed here: it is the only language that does not belong to the Indo-European language family and makes a distinction between short and long vowels as well as between singletons and geminates. In orthography, long segments are mostly visible by doubling the letter (e.g., kiitos ‘thank you’; mutta ‘but’). As for consonants, (almost) all Finnish geminates /lː/, /rː/, /mː/, /nː/, /pː/, /kː/, /sː/, /ŋː/ occur in intervocalic position, for example, alla ‘under’, tarra ‘sticker’, lammas ‘sheep’, kissa ‘cat’, kengät [keŋːæt] ‘shoes’. Additionally, the voiceless stops /p/, /t/, /k/ and fricative /s/ can also be geminated after sonorants (e.g., kansa ‘people’, kanssa ‘with’), but gemination of voiced stops /b/, /d/, /ɡ/, fricatives /f/, /ʃ/ and approximants /ʋ/, /j/ is very marginal and only possible in certain colloquial or dialectal uses and loanwords. The same applies for /h/ (hihhuli ‘religious fanatic’ is the only Finnish word with hh). In contrast to Italian, Finnish geminates can also follow long vowels (e.g., muuttaa ‘to change’). What do you think? Will Finnish speakers have an advantage over Czech, German or Spanish learners in Italian?

20.10.2024