gemination
Sign in to saveAlso known as consonant length, long consonant, double consonant, geminated consonant, consonant elongation, geminate consonant
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from gemini 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from stress. Gemination is represented in many writing systems by a doubled letter and is often perceived as a doubling of the consonant. Some phonological theories use 'doubling' as a synonym for gemination, while others describe two distinct phenomena.
Key facts
- IPA.ipa symbol
- ◌ː
- IPA.ipa number
- 503
- IPA.decimal1
- 720
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Image
- Dgnape Gn.gnape.jpg
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~29 min read
Article
41 sectionsContents
- Phonetics
- Phonology
- Examples
- Afroasiatic languages
- Arabic
- Berber
- Hebrew
- Austronesian languages
- Kavalan
- Malay dialects
- Tuvaluan
- Indo-European languages
- English
- French
- Greek
- Hindustani
- Aspirated consonants
- Italian
- Latin
- Nepali
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Punjabi
- Russian
- Spanish
- Luganda
- Japanese
- Turkic languages
- Turkish
- Dravidian languages
- Malayalam
- Tamil
- Uralic languages
- Sámi languages
- Estonian
- Finnish
- Wagiman
- Writing
- Double letters that are not long consonants
- See also
- References
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from gemini 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from stress. Gemination is represented in many writing systems by a doubled letter and is often perceived as a doubling of the consonant. Some phonological theories use 'doubling' as a synonym for gemination, while others describe two distinct phenomena.
Consonant length is a distinctive feature in certain languages, such as Japanese. Other languages, such as Modern Greek, do not have word-internal phonemic consonant geminates.