Lithuanian phonology

This article is about the phonology of the Lithuanian language. Lithuanian has a phonemic inventory consisting of eleven vowels and 45 consonants, including 22 pairs of consonants distinguished by the presence or absence of palatalization.

All Lithuanian consonants except /j/ have two variants: the non-palatalized one represented by the IPA symbols in the chart, and the palatalized one (i.e., /b/ – /bʲ/, /d/ – /dʲ/, /ɡ/ – /ɡʲ/, and so on). The consonants /f/, /x/, /ɣ/ and their palatalized variants are only found in loanwords. Consonants preceding the front vowels /ɪ/, /iː/, /ɛ/, /æː/ and /eː/, as well as any palatalized consonant or /j/ are always moderately palatalized (a feature Lithuanian has in common with the Belarusian and Russian languages but which is not present in the more closely related Latvian). Followed by back vowels /aː/, /ɐ/, /oː/, /ɔ/, /uː/, and /ʊ/, consonants can also be palatalized (causing some vowels to shift; see the Vowels section below); in such cases, the standard orthography inserts the letter i between the vowel and the preceding consonant (which is not pronounced separately), e.g. noriu [ˈnôːrʲʊ], ('I want'). Most of the non-palatalized and palatalized consonants form minimal pairs (like šuo [ʃuə], 'dog' ~ šiuo [ʃʲuə], 'with this one'), so they are independent phonemes, rather than allophones.

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