Galician phonology
This article is about the phonology and phonetics of the Galician language. Vowels. Galician has seven vowel phonemes, which are represented by five letters in writing. Similar vowels are found under stress in standard Catalan and Italian. It is likely that this 7-vowel system was even more widespread in the early stages of Romance languages. Some characteristics of the vocalic system: Galician language possesses a large set of falling diphthongs: There are also a certain number of rising diphthongs, but they are not characteristic of the language and tend to be pronounced as hiatus. Consonants. Voiced plosives  (, and ) are lenited (weakened) to approximants or fricatives in all instances, except after a pause or a nasal consonant; e.g. 'a cat' is pronounced , whilst 'the cat' is pronounced . During the modern period, Galician consonants have undergone significant sound changes that closely parallel the evolution of Spanish consonants, including the following changes that neutralized the opposition of voiced fricatives / voiceless fricatives: For a comparison, see Differences between Spanish and Portuguese: Sibilants. Additionally, during the 17th and 18th centuries the western and central dialects of Galician developed a voiceless fricative pronunciation of (a phenomenon called ). This may be glottal , pharyngeal , uvular  , or velar . The distribution of the two rhotics and closely parallels that of Spanish. Between vowels, the two contrast (e.g. 'myrrh' vs. 'look'), but they are otherwise in complementary distribution. appears in the onset, except in word-initial position (), after , , and (, ), where is used. There is a free variation in "r" word-initially, after , , and : , , . Spanish has been experiencing a centuries-long consonant shift in which the lateral consonant comes to be pronounced as a fricative (see ). This merger, which is almost complete for Spanish in Spain, has slightly influenced other varieties spoken in Spain, including some Galician ones, but  it is rejected by Galician language institutions. In this respect, it can be said that Portuguese is phonologically more conservative than Galician.