The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Valencian language pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see ,  and .   Key for standard Catalan and Valencian  There are two major standards, one of Catalan ()—based in the Central Coast of Catalonia, 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 in Wikipedia articles except in cases where a local pronunciation is clearly more relevant (such as a place in Catalonia or a Valencian artist).  See Catalan phonology for a more thorough look at the sounds of standard Catalan and Valencian, and Catalan orthography for the main correspondences between spelling and pronunciation. (For an extensive list of spelling-to-sound correspondences, see this)     IPA  Consonants     Examples  English approximation   , , Obstruents assimilate to the voicing of the following consonant. In syllables produced in utterance-final position (i.e. the coda), voiced obstruents become devoiced (, ).   , ,  While betacism (that is, the merging of  and  into one phoneme) is common in most speakers of Catalan and in Valencia, several dialects still contrast the two sounds (usually represented as  and  respectively in Catalan orthography). The contrast is also maintained in Standard Valencian (, ).  () /  ()  , Voiced stops  become lenited [, , ] (that is, approximants or fricatives of the same place of articulation) when in the syllable onset and after a continuant. Otherwise they are pronounced as voiced or devoiced stops, similar to English b, d, g and p, t, k. Exceptions include  after a lateral consonant, and  after . In traditional non-betacist dialects,  usually fails to lenite (, ).  (found only in the betacist varieties) is pronounced between  and , or just like  but with both lips.  is pronounced between  and , or roughly like  but without completely blocking the air flow.   ,   () /  ()  , ,     ,  The sibilants  are alveolo-palatal or palato-alveolar. A variant of  includes the retracted  (with pronunciations closer to postalveolars , respectively).    () /  ()  , ,    ,    ,       , ,  between  and   , , , , , , ,    , ,Catalan orthography distinguishes between  (representing ) and  (representing a geminated ). In regular speech gemination of  is ignored altogether. Some dialects as well as young speakers can merge  with the glide  in a process similar to Spanish yeísmo. The sonorants  and  assimilate to the place of articulation of a following consonant (, ). Before palatals,  is  and  is . Before velars,  becomes  and before labial consonants,  becomes . The labiodental  appears before  and .   , ,    ,    ,    ,    ,    ,    ,    , , The rhotic consonants   and   only contrast between vowels. Otherwise, they are in complementary distribution as  with  occurring word-initially, after , , and , and in compounds; and  after hard plosives, the soft spirants , and . Syllable-final  varies according to dialect, emphasis, morpheme and the following sound. In all Catalan dialects, except most of Valencian,  is lost in coda position in suffixes of nouns and adjectives denoting the masculine singular and in the infinitive suffixes of verbs, except when the following morpheme begins with a vowel, although this may vary (, ). Scots   , ,  US   , ,     ,   () /  ()    () /  ()  ,    ,    ,    , ,    ,    ,     ,   () /  ()    () /  ()    () /  ()    IPA  Marginal consonants  Other than in loanwords and interjections, the letter  is always silent.,    ,    ,  Scots    IPA  SemivowelsThe semivowels  and  can be combined with most vowels to form diphthongs and triphthongs (, ). For a list with all the combinations, see .     Examples  English approximation  , ,    , , ,   IPA  Vowels     Examples  English approximation  ,     ,    , Many words that have  in Standard Catalan have  in Standard Valencian. The latter is the historical pronunciation.  () /  ()  , ,    In unstressed position, the vowel contrast is reduced in all dialects.  Eastern Catalan:  merge to , whereas  merge to , leaving only  in most unstressed syllables.  Western Catalan:  merge to  and  merge to . Exceptionally there are some cases where unstressed  and  may merge with  and  respectively (, ). In Standard Eastern Catalan, unstressed  and  appear only in some words such as  ,  ,   and  . In other cases, they merge with  and  ().  In Standard Valencian, unstressed  and  occur in the process known as vowel harmony (e.g.   and  ). In North-western, there are cases where only  is found in final unstressed syllables:  .  () /  ()  ,      () /  ()  , ,    ,     , , ,      () /  ()    IPA  Marginal vowels  The vowel  is usually replaced by  or .  is pronounced like , but with the lips rounded.    IPA  Suprasegmentals     Examples  Explanation     () /  () primary stress     ( / ) secondary stress     () /  () syllable break     () /  () long consonant/vowel IPA  Other representations ( )    ( / ) optional sound   Other transcriptions  Catalan in Andorra, Western Catalonia and La Franja () Northwestern, a continuous dialect of the Western Catalan branch, uses the same pronunciation pattern as Standard Valencian (see  above). However, there are some differences that should be used in the transcription of local names in Andorra, Western Catalonia (Lleida and part of Tarragona) and the Aragonese border (La Franja). Those differences are:     (i.e. commonalities with Standard Catalan)  Examples  English approximation Betacism  ,  →   ,            →   ,     (Note for transcriptions of Northwestern Catalan use , with the corresponding sounds of Standard Valencian and the sharing features with Standard Catalan)  Transcription of Insular Eastern Catalan For transcriptions of Insular Catalan dialects: Help:IPA/Insular Catalan &    Notes    Bibliography           External links