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Luxembourgish phonology


This article aims to describe the phonology and phonetics of central Luxembourgish, which is regarded as the emerging standard.

The consonant inventory of Luxembourgish is quite similar to that of Standard German.

In external sandhi, syllable-final /n/ is deleted unless followed by [n t d t͡s h], with few exceptions. Furthermore, some unusual consonant clusters may arise post-lexically after cliticisation of the definite article d' (for feminine, neuter and plural forms), e.g. d'Land [dlɑnt] ('the country') or d'Kräiz [tkʀæːɪ̯t͡s] ('the cross'). Due to cluster simplification this article often disappears entirely between consonants.

Phonetically, word-final /b, d, d͡ʒ, ɡ, v, z, ʒ, ʁ/ are realized exactly the same as /p, t, t͡ʃ, k, f, s, ʃ, χ ~ ɕ/. In most cases, they are realized the same as the main allophones of /p, t, t͡ʃ, k, f, s, ʃ, χ ~ ɕ/ (i.e. voiceless), but when the next word begins with a vowel and is pronounced without a pause, they are realized the same as the main allophones of /b, d, d͡ʒ, ɡ, v, z, ʒ, ʁ ~ ʑ/, i.e. voiced and are resyllabified, that is, moved to the onset of the first syllable of the next word (the same happens with /ts/, which becomes [d͡z], and the non-native affricate /p͡f/, which is also voiced to [b͡v]). For instance, sech eens is pronounced [zəˈʑeːns], although this article transcribes it [zəʑ‿ˈeːns] for simplicity. Similarly, eng interessant Iddi [eŋ intʀæˈsɑnd‿ˈidi] ('an interesting idea').


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