Talk:Consonant voicing and devoicing

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Untitled

Sorry for starting this and leaving it in a very unfinished state. I came across this concept in my phonology textbook and was surprised to see that it is not covered on Wikipedia (at least not under this name). If this same concept (not voicelessness) is address under a different name, please feel free to redirect this page to the appropriated page (and transfer any non-duplicated info, of course). Some of the info here can be found here. Thanks.--Hraefen ^Talk 00:45, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions for expansion

I'm not sure that all of these pages refer to devoicing as it is used here (many of them probably refer to the diachronic i.e. permanent change within a word from a voiced consonant to a voicelss consonant), but upon creating this page, some of the pages that contained the word "devoicing" were:

--Hraefen ^Talk 00:45, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Initial voicing

The section titled initial voicing currently says:

Initial voicing is a process of historical sound change where voiceless consonants become voiced before a vowel. For example, in modern German sagen is pronounced [zaːɡn̩], but the spelling reflects older pronunciation with a voiceless fricative.

(Disregarding the broken grammar) I believe the 2nd part of the 2nd sentence to be wrong. While a German colloquial pronunciation is as quoted (official pronunciation would be [zaːɡən̩]), and an older form is indeed seggen which had a pronunciation with a voiceless initial in the middle ages, and still has in those "dialects" (better term: local languages) where it is retained, the spelling reflects plain nothing. Contrasting most other Indo-European languages, there is no way to distinguish between a voiced and an unvoiced alveolar fricative in German spelling, since the letter "s" stands for both. There are some rules, though:

With the general exception of the trigraph "sch":
- within basic words with all prefixes and suffixes stripped (i.e. not in compound words such as "Friedenspfeife")
  - Except in foreign words:
    1. initial "s" followed by a vowel is voiced. (Not true for the majority of dialects and regiolects; there is a recent flood of foreign words such as "server" that the rule does not apply to, which seem not to be adapted into German and become subjected to the rule make, which it nore and more useless.)
    2. with some exceptions, initial "s" followed by either "p" or "t" is pronounced [ʃ] (Not true for some dialects and regiolects)
    3. initial "s" followed by any other consonant is unvoiced.
  - Except in foreign words and a list of regional words and a list of exceptions and not in Switzerland:
    1. intervocalic "s" is voiced (Not so for some dialects and regiolects), and
    2. intervocalic unvoiced "s" is spelt "ss" or "ß" (Not so for some dialects and regiolects)
  - "s" before a consonant other than "h" is unvoiced;
  - "ß" is pronounced [s]
  - terminal "s" is unvoiced;
otherwise, you have to know the pronunciation of "s" in German.

I think, these are the major rules, the list is likely incomplete but easy to follow. --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 05:55, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Syllabic voicing and devoicing

What is the purpose of the section heading Syllabic voicing and devoicing, and what is specifically meant by "syllabic" here? The phenomena listed in that section are no more or less syllabic than those listed outside of it; e.g. if final devoicing is considered syllabic, then so should be voicing of initial letter. Can we just delete the section heading? — Sebastian 18:16, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Initial and final devoicing of lenis stops in (only?) American English

This website of the Radboud University in the Netherlands explained that initial and final lenis stops (b,d,g) as in “did” or “bib” are mostly devoiced in General American. The major difference be lacking aspiration of initial devoiced b/d/g vs p/t/g and longer vowel lengths before devoiced b/d/g vs p/t/k phonemes. I don’t know if that devoicing is limited to American English? The different vowel lengths might be limited to American, I guess. A11w1ss3nd (talk) 15:38, 16 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]