User:YodaMaster445/Playground/Romanian Consonants

Consonants
Standard Romanian has twenty phonemic consonants, as listed in the table below. Where symbols for consonants occur in pairs, the left represents a voiceless consonant and the right represents a voiced consonant.

All consonants marked as "dental" in this table (excluding ) are apico-dental. is apico-alveolar.

⟨c⟩+⟨a/ă/â/î/o/u⟩ means ⟨c⟩ is pronounced as. ⟨c⟩+⟨e/i⟩ means ⟨c⟩ is pronounced as. ⟨ch⟩+⟨e/i⟩ means ⟨ch⟩ is pronounced as. ⟨k⟩ is used in loan words.

⟨g⟩+⟨a/ă/â/î/o/u⟩ means ⟨g⟩ is pronounced as. ⟨g⟩+⟨e/i⟩ means ⟨g⟩ is pronounced as. ⟨gh⟩+⟨e/i⟩ means ⟨gh⟩ is pronounced as.

Besides the consonants in this table, a few consonants can have allophones:
 * Palatalized consonants occur when preceding an underlying word-final, which is then deleted.
 * becomes the velar before,  and ;
 * becomes the velar in word-final positions (duh 'spirit') and before consonants (hrean 'horseradish'); it becomes the palatal  before, , like in the word human in English, and as a realization for an underlying  sequence in word-final positions (cehi 'Czech people' is pronounced , though usually transcribed ).

The consonant inventory of Romanian is almost the same as Italian. Romanian, however, lacks the palatal consonants, which merged with by lenition, and the affricate  changed to  by spirantization. Romanian has the fricative and the glottal fricative, which do not occur in Italian.

Palatalized consonants
Palatalized consonants appear mainly at the end of words, and mark two grammatical categories: plural nouns and adjectives, and second person singular verbs.

The interpretation commonly taken is that an underlying morpheme palatalizes the consonant and is subsequently deleted. However,, , and become , , and , respectively, with very few phonetically justified exceptions, included in the table below, which shows that this palatalization can occur for all consonants.

In certain morphological processes is replaced by the full vowel, for example
 * in noun plural genitive formation: școli — școlilor ('schools — of the schools'),
 * when appending the definite article to some plural nouns: brazi — brazii ('fir trees — the fir trees')
 * in verb + pronoun combinations: dați — dați-ne ('give — give us').

This may explain why is perceived as a separate sound by native speakers and written with the same letter as the vowel.

The non-syllabic can be sometimes found inside compound words like câțiva  ('a few') and oriunde  ('wherever'), where the first morpheme happened to end in this. A word that contains this twice is cincizeci ('fifty').

In old Romanian and still in some local pronunciations there is another example of such a non-syllabic, non-semivocalic phoneme, derived from, which manifests itself as labialization of the preceding sound. The usual IPA notation is. It is found at the end of some words after consonants and semivowels, as in un urs, pronounced ('a bear'), or îmi spui  ('you tell me'). The disappearance of this phoneme might be attributed to the fact that, unlike, it didn't play any morphological role. It is possibly a trace of Latin endings containing (-us, -um), this phoneme is related to vowel  used to connect the definite article "l" to the stem of a noun or adjective, as in domn — domnul  ('lord — the lord', cf. Latin dominus).

Other consonants
As with other languages, Romanian interjections often use sounds beyond the normal phoneme inventory or disobey the normal phonotactical rules, by containing unusual phoneme sequences, by allowing words to be made up of only consonants, or by consisting of repetitions. Such exceptional mechanisms are needed to obtain an increased level of expressivity. Often, these interjections have multiple spellings or occasionally none at all, which accounts for the difficulty of finding the right approximation using existing letters. The following is a list of examples.


 * A bilabial click, pronounced by rounding the lips and strongly sucking air between them, is used for urging horses to start walking.
 * Whistling is another interjection surpassing the limits of the phoneme inventory. It is usually spelled fiu-fiu.
 * The dental click (see also click consonants) is used in an interjection similar to the English tut-tut (or tsk-tsk), expressing concern, disappointment, disapproval, etc., and generally accompanied by frowning or a comparable facial expression. Usually two to four such clicks in a row make up the interjection; only one click is rare and more than four can be used for over-emphasis. The Romanian spelling is usually tț, ttt or țțț.
 * The same dental click is used in another interjection, the informal equivalent of "no" (nu in Romanian). Only one click is emitted, usually as an answer to a yes-no question. Although there is rarely any accompanying sound, the usual spelling is nt or nț.
 * A series of interjections are pronounced with the mouth shut. Depending on intonation, length, and rhythm, they can have various meanings, such as: perplexity, doubt, displeasure, tastiness, toothache, approval, etc. Possible spellings include: hm, hâm/hîm, mhm, îhî, mmm, îî, hî. Phonetically similar, but semantically different, is the English interjection ahem.
 * Another interjection, meaning "no", is pronounced (with a high-low phonetic pitch). Possible spellings include: î-î, îm-îm, and m-m. The stress pattern is opposite to the interjection for "yes" mentioned before, pronounced  (with a low-high phonetic pitch).
 * Pfu expresses contempt or dissatisfaction and starts with the voiceless bilabial fricative, sounding like (but being different from) the English whew, which expresses relief after an effort or danger.
 * Câh/cîh expresses disgust and ends in the voiceless velar fricative, similar in meaning to English ugh.
 * Brrr expresses shivering cold and is made up of a single consonant, the bilabial trill, whose IPA symbol is