विकिपिडिया:IPA for Catalan

The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Catalan language pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. There are two major standards, one of Catalan (based in Barcelona, encompassing most Eastern Catalan features) and one of Valencian (based in Southern Valencia, encompassing most Western Catalan features). Neither variant is preferred over the other at Wikipedia except in cases where a local pronunciation is clearly more relevant (such as a place in the Valencian Community or a Catalan artist).

See Catalan phonology for a more thorough look at the sounds of Catalan.

 IPA  Consonants      Examples  English equivalent ; Voiced obstruents  are devoiced ([       ]) at the end of an utterance. In some dialects (particularly North-Western Catalan and Central Catalan),  and  may be elided when occurring utterance-finally after a nasal consonant (e.g. amb, seient, sang), in the case of , in some of these dialects, this has extended also after liquids (e.g. alt, hort).best; In Catalan and Valencian, /  / become lenited [  ] (that is, fricatives or approximants of the same place of articulation) when in the syllable onset and after a continuant. Otherwise they are pronounced as voiced (or devoiced) stops, not dissimilar to English b, d, g and p, t, k. Exceptions include  after a lateral consonant, and  after . In regular speech in Valencian, intervocalic  may be elided (e.g. fideuada/fideuà).between baby and bevy ; Voiced obstruents are devoiced word-finallydead; this; face; ;  In most of Majorcan the velar plosives,  and , become palatal,  and , before front vowels () and word-finally (e.g. figuera , sac ) in some of these dialects, this has extended to all environments except before liquids and back vowels; e.g. sang .got; ; between go and ahold; ; ; ; scan; ; ; Catalan orthography distinguishes between ‹ll› (representing ), and ‹l·l› (representing a geminated //). In regular speech gemination of ‹l·l› is ignored altogether.‹l› is always dark  in Eastern Catalan. In other dialects, like Valencian, it may vary allophonically with the alveolar lateral approximant, ~, as it does in English. In Catalan and Valencian,  is assimilated to  before palatal consonants (e.g. Elx, àlgid), and in La Franja Catalan (Aragon)  is palatalized to  in consonant clusters, such as ; e.g. plou .wool or luck; wool;  ; ; roughly like million; ; ; The nasal consonants  only contrast before vowels. Before consonants,  assimilates to the consonant's place of articulation (e.g.  occurs before a velar consonant,  before a palatal consonant,  before a labial consonant, while  is found elsewhere).mother; ; need; ; ; sing ; ; ; roughly like canyon; spouse; ; ; The rhotic consonants  ‹r› and  ‹rr› only contrast between vowels. Otherwise, they are in complementary distribution as ‹r› with,  occurring word-initially, after , , and , in compounds and at the end of an utterance;  is found elsewhere. Utterance-final  is pronounced as  in Valencian. In all Catalan dialects, except most of Valencian, word final  is generally dropped (e.g. parlar , fer ), still and all there are many exceptions (e.g. per ). In most cases, word final ‹r› is pronounced when the following word begins with a vowel (e.g. fer-hi ; notice here intervocalic ‹r› is a tap, ). trilled r; ladder in American English ; ; ; ; ; ; ;  
In Catalan and Valencian an assimilation process occurs wherein two identical sibilants appearing in sequence within a word are reduced to a single consonant. For details, see Catalan orthography.sack; In some dialects,  is deaffricated to  in verbal forms ending in -itzar; e.g. analitzar /. Similarly, , which only occurs word-initially in loanwords (e.g. tsar, tsuga) is deaffricated in these dialects.cats or sack; ; cats; ; The pronunciation of words with the digraph ‹ix› varies; an absent  is generally more common in Eastern Catalan dialects (e.g. caixa ) and -retention is more common in Valencian and North-Western Catalan (e.g. caixa ), though there are exceptions.While  are often described simply as "postalveolar" by many sources, phonetic work done by Daniel Recasens shows the postalveolar sibilants to be alveolo-palatal (, ,  and , respectively). Nevertheless, since  are overwhelmingly used in the linguistic literature on Catalan and Valencian, those characters are also used at Wikipedia.sheep; ; sheep or chin; ; ; chin; stand; ; ; Several dialects have  as a separate phoneme, in particular, Balearic, Alguerese, standard Valencian, and certain parts of Tarragona; e.g. viu . Betacism (that is, merging of  and ) is general in the rest of Catalan areas (e.g. viu ).veal; ; ; ; zebra; pads or zebra; ; pads; vision; ; vision or gene; ; ; gene IPA  Marginal consonantsMarginal consonants are found in loanwords, largely from Spanish but also from Caló, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, English, German, etc.; thing; ;  Other than in loanwords and interjections, the letter ‹h› is always silent.ham; ; loch 
 IPA  VowelsAll Catalan dialects contrast seven stressed vowels  (though Balearic, especially Majorcan, contrasts eight stressed vowels; the former ones, plus ). In Alguerese and Northern Catalan open-mid and close-mid vowels may merge into mid vowels [] and []. In unstressed position, the seven-way vowel contrast is reduced in all dialects.
 Eastern Catalan (Central Catalan, Northern Catalan, Balearic and Alguerese): , , and  reduce to  (though in Alguerese , , and  merge to ) while  and  reduce to  (however, in most of Majorcan  and  merge to ).
 Western Catalan (North-Western Catalan and Valencian):  reduces to  and  reduces to . Exceptionally there are some cases where unstressed ‹e› and ‹o› may reduce to  and  respectively. Furthermore, unstressed ‹e› may reduce to  in some other cases. In these dialects, open-mid vowels  and  can also appear in unstressed syllables.
In Catalan and Valencian occurs synalepha (that is the merging of two syllables into one). A synalepha may be produced either by elision (when combining two non-high vowels): una hora ; or by diphthongization (when combining any vowel with high vowels); e.g. posa-hi .     Examples  English equivalent; While in most dialects  is central , it is front  in many Balearic dialects.father; ; The mid-open vowels  and  are lower in Valencian and most Balearic dialects, that is, in these dialects the phonetic realization of  approaches , while  is as low as .bedIn most of Balearic, especially Majorcan,  can appear in stressed position; e.g. sec . This corresponds to stressed  or  in other dialects. ; bed or pay; pay; Many Valencian dialects feature a sort of vowel harmony when a syllable with stressed  or  precedes another syllable with unstressed  or ; e.g. dona/es  and terra/es . In some Valencian and North-Western Catalan dialects there are some instances where unstressed ‹e› and ‹o› may be reduced:
 Unstressed ‹e› merges with  before a nasal or sibilant consonant (e.g. enveja, espill, eixugar), in monosyllabic clitics, and in some environments before any consonant (e.g. terròs, clevill, trepitjar). Likewise, unstressed ‹e› merges into , in lexical derivation with -eixement/-aixement (e.g. coneixement). In some subvarieties  is raised to  in all instances when in contact with palatal consonants; e.g. senyor .
 Unstressed ‹o› merges with  before a bilabial consonant (e.g. cobert), when it precedes a stressed syllable with a high vowel (e.g. conill), in contact with palatal consonants (e.g. Josep), and in monosyllabic clitics. In North-Western Catalan word final unstress ‹a› and ‹e› may reduce to ; e.g. Lleida , dona/es ; terra/es .about or father;  ; In most of Valencian, preposition amb merges with en. Also, some verbal forms ending in unstressed ‹a› are pronounced as  (e.g. verbs in third person singular: cantava, cantaria, canta, thus in Valencian first person singular (jo) cantava  contrasts with third person singular (ell) cantava , a similar process also occurs with gender neutral words; e.g. artista (m.)  and artista (f.) ).about or pay; about or see  ; ; ; see; ; raw; ; raw or code; code; ; ; food or code; ; ; food ; ; ;  IPA  Marginal vowelsMarginal vowels are found in Northern Catalan in loanwords and interferences from Occitan and French.; ; roughly like cute (NC); ; In Northern Catalan  becomes  in some instances in contact with palatal consonants (e.g. fulles ~). In other cases it may appear in French interferences, such as sœur or jeunesse (instead of Catalan germana and joventut).roughly like bird (NC)   IPA  SemivowelsThe semivowels  and  can be combined with most vowels to form diphthongs and triphthongs.     Examples  English equivalent; ; ; you or boy; ; ; wine or cow   IPA  Suprasegmentals     Examples  Explanation rínxol  (C) /  (V)primary stress capgròs  (C/V)secondary stress ties  (C) /  (V)syllable break cotna  (C) /  (V)geminationSonorants  (except ) are the most common geminated consonants (e.g. setmana, cotna),  does not occur in Valencian and Balearic Catalan (e.g. motlle/motle). In north-western and eastern varieties plosives  and  may also be geminated in certain environments, instead of usual lenition (e.g. poble , regla ). Moreover affricates are particularly long in intervocalic position in many dialects; e.g. metge . 

 Notes 

 See also 
 Catalan phonology

 References 
Catalan






Valencian


Catalan