Talk:Romanian phonology

Disputed

Firstly, I think it's incorrect to say that Romanian has a voiceless vowel; final orthographical <i> represents palatilization of the preceeding consonant, not /i̥/. Romanian therefore has seven vowels, not eight. Secondly, it's misleading to call <ea> and <oa> semivowels; they may be /ja/ and /wa/ (although I was always under the impression that they were /ea/ and /oa/), but in that case they're just falling diphthongs (the other diphthongs need to be added to the article as well). I'm not familiar enough with Romanian phonology to very comfortably say that I'm a hundred percent sure about this, however; I'd like to hear what someone more knowledgable than I am has to offer. --Whimemsz 22:41, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)

It does seem to me, though, that final <i> does have a voiceless quality to it. In word-final <-ai> and <-ei>, the diphthong seems to lose its voicing (or, stated another way, acquire a whispered, breathy quality) somewhere in the middle. And in at least one case I can think of — word-final <-ri> — the /r/ is completely devoiced as far as I can tell. Richwales 23:36, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

See my reply in section "Non-syllabic /i/" below. --AdiJapan 11:36, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Expansion request

The above has been corrected, apparently, but there's still the issue of whether these diphthongs are descending or ascending (and the status of triphthongs). I'd like to see something about metrics (cf mora (linguistics), timing (linguistics)), song and poetry, etc. as it relates to such vowel combinations.

Allophonic variation, dialectal varieties, phonotactics, are also missing. I know next to nothing about Romanian so I can't really help. I'm here as a member of the WikiProject Phonetics.

--Pablo D. Flores 12:41, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I'd love to be able to contribute more here, but I simply don't know more about Romanian phonology than the information that's on the page right now (actually, I believe that most of the diphthongs are rising, but I'd have to check). I agree it does need work, though. --Whimemsz 21:58, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

I live in Romania, oa is wa, rather than us, And ea is ja, rather than ia. ă and â are back vowels, not'central'. Thus, õ and ı, Someone seemed to have imagined that because Moldova used bl for â, eg, Cernobîl, that the sound was that used in Russian, rather than in the various Central Asian scripts. Athanasius V (talk) 19:05, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Mic Tratat de Ortografie, Al.Graur, states #114, Ă is equal to Albanian ë and Bulgar (u). #117 Î is equal to Welsh y and Turkish dotless Iı. These are IPA back vowels, unrounded o and u. Athanasius V (talk) 22:20, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Albanian 'ë' is given as central on the Albanian language page, but with 'a great degree of variability from extreme back to extreme front articulation'. The source (at https://projects.ari.oeaw.ac.at/publications/2001_granser_moosmueller_the_schwa_in_albanian.pdf) says that there has been a tendency to shift the central vowel backwards and then interestingly mentions that this has also happened in Romanian (in the period 1963-1985). Exarchus (talk) 15:56, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Now about 'â': the irony is that in Turkish phonology there's a debate about exactly the same thing: is 'ı' a central or back vowel? (see http://dilbilimi.net/kilic_ogut_a_high_unrounded_vowel.pdf) It's not because it's classified as a back vowel for purposes of vowel harmony that it's phonetically [ɯ]. The conclusion of the cited paper is: "because of the instability of this vowel, various symbols like [ɯ], [ɨ], [ɤ] or [ə] may be used in narrow phonetic transcription."

One also has to keep in mind that unrounded back vowels will tend to be more centralized than their rounded counterparts (mentioned on 'Close back unrounded vowel' page).

You also mention Welsh 'y', but this is given as [ɨ̞] on the phonology page (and has merged with [ɪ] in Southern Wales).

About Romanian specifically: starting at page 146 of https://www.scribd.com/document/273379627/Renwick-2012-Vowels-of-Romanian, you can see that 〈a〉, 〈ă〉 and 〈â〉 are about equally central (〈ă〉 is called /ʌ/ by the author, but she doesn't imply it's a back vowel). Exarchus (talk) 20:09, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Comparing Romanian to Russian: when I look at the graph at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_phonology#/media/File:Russian_stressed_vowels_F1_F2.png, Russian 〈ы〉 ('CiC') does appear to be more front than Romanian /ɨ/. I have my doubts whether the Russian vowel chart at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_phonology#/media/File:Russian_vowel_chart.svg (a source from 1923?) is accurate on this.

Also, 〈ы〉 seems to be slightly diphthongized (see Russian phonology page). Padgett 2001 (http://roa.rutgers.edu/files/504-0302/504-0302-PADGETT-0-0.PDF) says: "these results show that the contrast between Cˠi and Ci is much greater at the release of C than in the following vowel, indicating that Cˠi versus Ci (or Cʲi) is indeed a better representation of the facts than is Cɨ versus Cʲi"

So Romanian may be a better example of [ɨ] than Russian. Exarchus (talk) 21:45, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

IPA 315 & 316 Any other notation is simply laziness. Athanasius V (talk) 22:28, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

O

An anonymous user changed the phoneme /o/ to /O/. Can anyone confirm that this is in fact the pronunciation of <o>? --Whimemsz 00:28, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

For the time being, I've reverted, because all of this anon user's edits have been inserting this weird (inaccurate, in most cases) description of a given language's phoneme /o/. So I'm fairly sure they have no sources or anything, but rather that for some reason they're doing this in random language articles. --Whimemsz 00:58, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

Semivowels

I've seen written in several places (not only this particular article) that Romanian has two semivowels. I consider this to be inaccurate. Nobody seems to talk about e as a semivowel, although it does play this role at least in the diphthong ea and in the less frequent diphthong eo and also in two triphthongs (eai, eau). I agree that it cannot end a diphthong, but is that a reason to disconsider it as a semivowel? Romanian might well be the only language to use a semivocalic e, I cannot think of any other example.

Finnish has a semivocalic e, but only in the diphthong /ie/, as in pieni ’small’. Romanian is, therefore, not the only language to have a semivocalic e. Berndt Söderström 18:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Another remark: It is often said that the o in the diphthong oa is the semivowel /w/, however, in my opinion this is just an approximation. This semivocalic o still maintains enough of its o-ness to be considered a separate sound. Trying to pronounce words like oameni, coate, foarte with a normal /w/ leads to an exaggerated pronunciation.

As I'm not a professional in phonetics I cannot make a precise evaluation of these two issues, but as a Romanian native speaker I have the clear feeling that something is being overlooked here. I'd be glad to hear some other opinions. Thanks. --AdiJapan 06:21, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Me again. In the meantime I found relevant information about semivowels, diphthongs, and triphthongs in Romanian, and I added those respective sections. --AdiJapan 02:30, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

The ea diphthong (after a consonant) sounds, to me, more like a palatalization of the preceding consonant, combined with a slight fronting of the /a/. Listen to a word like seara, and in some people's speech it sounds almost like ['sʲæra] — the two /a/'s don't sound the same (though, if you're a native speaker, you may need to listen really hard and overcome your subconscious "knowledge" that the two /a/'s are equivalent). Richwales 00:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

To some degree I suppose you are right. Some people do indeed pronounce ea somewhat close to a single vowel, without much glide. But this is not standard, and in my ears it actually sounds like careless speech. Careless or careful though, most people pronounce it with a distinct glide, ending in vowel [a]. I pronounced your example and listened to myself very carefully: Before and after [r] I hear exactly the same sound, and there is no detectable change in the mouth shape.

Also, I would say that palatalization is a bit an overstatement. I pronounced the diphthong with every possible consonant before it and found out that only [k], [g] and [h] become palatalized, but then again this is the normal behavior of these consonants before vowel [e].

However, I agree that the number and the depth of sources on the subject of semivocalic e and o is by far insufficient. --AdiJapan 10:28, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough. You're a native speaker, and I'm certainly not, so I should trust your judgment on what sounds careful/careless.

Regarding palatalization, how about the combination tea? When I first started studying Romanian, about 20 years ago, I remember trying to pronounce cartea, and my first effort came out something like ['kartja], and my teacher tried to get me to say it more like ['kartʲa], or even ['karca] (using a sound similar to the Hungarian ty palatal stop). In case it might make a difference, my teacher was a visiting professor from Cluj, but he was not ethnic Hungarian, and I don't even think he spoke any Hungarian.

I'd also be interested in your thoughts on the alleged voicelessness of final i (up in the "Disputed" section) — in case perhaps you hadn't noticed what I wrote there. Richwales 09:04, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

It does make a difference. People from both Transylvania and Moldavia tend to pronounce tea as [tʲa] or even [tja], which partially or completely overlaps (phonetically) diphthongs ea and ia. This is not a problem with tea because tia is not a common word fragment (it became ţia), but can cause confusion in the case of -mea-, -chea-, etc. On the other hand, standard Romanian (as spoken in Wallachia) makes a clear difference between ea and ia.

I wish I had some sources on the phonetical differences between regional speeches in Romania, this would make a valuable addition to the article. Choosing one or other speech as standard is of course arbitrary, and as it is now the article refers mostly to the language spoken in about one third of the country. --AdiJapan 12:01, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Italian /ʣ/ is missing in Romanian

also Italian /ʣ/ is missing in Romanian

Actually, it is missing in standard Romanian, but it is present in the vernacular of some regions, such as Maramureş and Bukovina. For example, they say "dumnădzău" for "dumnezeu". bogdan | ^Talk 13:17, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, /dz/ evolved in Wallachia in /z/. And so in the standard Romanian. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.117.43.100 (talk) 09:53, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

But not in Aromanian

Athanasius V (talk) 19:06, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Non-syllabic /i/

AE, I'm replying your questions here, as the discussion is strictly related to this article.

From the pdf it sounds like i at the end of words is /j/. It would certainly palatalize the preceding consonant and I would imagine that it could easily turn into simple palatalization in more rapid speech or whatever. The thing about /ʲ/ is that it is not even a separate sound. I think that /j/ would probably be best if it is a separate sound. If not, then I think we should conform the discussion closer to the way linguists would describe it rather than native speakers; that is, call it palatalization but mention that speakers perceive it as a vowel. Omniglot says that it is straight palatalization but as we both know, omniglot can be very wrong sometimes.

Saying "i at the end of the word" is phonetically very vague. An "i" at the end of the word can be pronounced in many ways. You have:

• a full vowel, as at the end of a large group of verbs in the infinitive mood: a gândi (to think), a lovi (to hit), a fugi (to run), etc. Even after a vowel this kind of i stays a vowel: a sui (to climb), a grăi (to utter), a spoi (to paint, to whitewash). Curiously enough, this i stays a vowel even when it comes after another i: a se sfii (to be too shy for something), a prii (to befit, to agree), in which case each i has, of course, its own syllable: prii is pronounced /pri'i/.

• a semivowel, as usually after vowels, except for the cases given above. For example pai (straw) is pronounced /paj/ in usual notation, or /paĭ/ in the uniformized notation of this article. This case includes the sitations when semivocalic /ĭ/ comes after a full /i/: fii (sons) is pronounced /fij/ - /fiĭ/.

• the tricky /ʲ/ is many times, as you say, a palatalization of the previous consonant and is not a separate sound. Unfortunately I don't have references serious enough to describe this sound in full detail. The pdf I showed you (I must remember to include it in the article's reference list) touches the problem but as you noticed doesn't go deep enough. In writing that section I had to rely heavily on my knowledge as native speaker. I'm still looking for a good source.

According to the pdf, all of the apicals are dental. If this is the case, we ought to either move all the alveolar sounds to dental or merge them into an apical category and mention that they’re dental. Although we could also put a dental subscript on every t, d, n, ts, l, and r, I think that that would be unnecessary.

Traditionally, most works on Romance phonetics (I have checked several books, on Romanian, French, Italian, and Spanish phonetics) has this classification of the alveolar sounds as dental or sometimes denti-alveolar. Wikipedia article Dental consonant makes it quite clear that they are actually alveolar laminal consonants. The article as it is now is even inconsistent by putting /t/ and /d/ separately from the others, which is a nonsense, since /n/, /t/, and /d/ are pronounced in the same place. I found the article like this and I didn't change it (I think) because the sources I have are contradictory. I would agree to put all these consonants in an alveolar laminal group and mention that they are often classified as dentals. Calling them dentals gets on my nerves because at least for /r/ and /l/ I just know I don't use my teeth at all. Arguably, for the others the teeth do have a role, but I think it's minor. /s/ and /z/ would be an exception, but then again, classifying them as dental fricative would make them overlap with /θ/ and /ð/.

It also says that e and o are open mid (including as semivowels). So we might want to change the symbols for those. I’ve noticed that there has been the wikipedia convention to put sounds that appear only in foreign borrowings in perenthesis. We should do this for ø.

Romanian /e/ and /o/ are mid vowels. The pdf says half-open, which I think was intended to mean the same. In any case, Romanian /e/ is somewhere between French close-mid /e/ and open-mid /ɛ/, whereas Romanian /o/ is bewteen French close-mid /o/ and open-mid /ɔ/ (if you prefer Italian as reference then read Italian instead of French). I guess once we state that in the article there's no need to put additional diacritics everywhere. Again, this article is about phonology.

Mention of /ii/ is missing in the pdf, as well as /eo/, /eu/, /uɨ/, /ieu/, /ioi/, /iou/, /uai/, /uau/, and /uəi/. As for undershirt, I think that it's confusing to the reader having two different spellings (not just pronunciations) for the same word. I recommend changing one of them to another example. AEuSoes1 00:51, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Many things are missing from this pdf and yet I consider it quite well written and useful, at least for those who want to learn Romanian. I can only explain the missing diphthongs and tripthongs by the fact that they are not as frequently used as the others. However, their existence is a fact, and I double-checked them in the dictionary. This online dictionary [1] (unfortunately in Romanian) also gives some phonetic indications when the written word allows for more than one pronunciation. For example, the definition of maiou is here, and the syllabification is given as ma-iou which means that in the group iou there is only one full vowel.

About the two confusing spellings, the problem is that there are very few words containing these triphthongs, and I wanted to stick to easily understandable and everyday-use words as examples. We can leave maiou for one case, and replace maieu with eu (I, myself) for the other. The reason why I don't particularly like this example is that eu can be pronounced anywhere between /eŭ/ (in formal situations) and /ĭeŭ/ (in usual speech). --AdiJapan 10:42, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

First of all the final i in written words can have at least three distinct phonemic values and probably even more alophones. I've given some examples above.

About the voiceless i, there is very little information available on the internet on the subject and I'm too far from Romania to have acces to a good Romanian library. The best thing I could find online is this otherwise rather comprehensive text on Romanian grammar, which also has a section on phonetics and another on phonological processes. To what I can understand it was either written by someone who had only basic knowledge about phonetics, or poorly translated into English, or again its sources were mistaken or incomplete. Generally a good text, but after reading it all this is my conclusion. Anyway, this source states that the final non-syllabic i after consonants is a semivowel (I'm not sure it can be called that), a short one to be more precise, which indicates a palatal or palatalized character of the previous consonant.

If you don't mind me doing a bit of original research (here on the talk page, not in the article) I can tell you how I understand this sound if I try hard to become aware of the way I pronounce it. In my opinion it is a vowel, all right, but it is devoiced and non-syllabic. The mouth takes the specific shape as if producing vowel [i]. The preceding consonant is palatalized just as much as if it were followed by a full-fledged vowel [i]. When this preceding consonant is originally voiced it becomes partially or totally devoiced, that is, the vocal chords stop vibrating at the beginning of the consonant or during its articulation. I notice that I tend to devoice [l] and [r] totally, whereas I devoice the others only partially. I could explain this by the fact that [l] and [r], even devoiced, cannot be mistaken for other sounds, so the total devoicing can't affect the meaning. So Richwales was right, I believe, about the complete devoicing of the word-final "-ri", except of course when that i is a full vowel.

As I have no confirmation of these personal observations from any source I cannot put them in the article, but I hope they help you better undersand the nature of this sound. One of these days I will make an audio recording and put it in the article. --AdiJapan 11:36, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

AdiJapan's description of final non-syllabic i matches my impression of the sound. My first impression of a word like ani (= years) was that the speaker had started out planning to say an [i] at the end of the word, but changed his mind at the last moment and didn't say it after all. Any difference in the [n] sound, except at the very end, was minimal.

I've also noticed (when watching segments of the TVR news program "Jurnalul" on my cable system) that, in many cases, a speaker saying a phrase with a word ending in final, non-syllabic i will end up with his/her lips spread as if saying [i], even though in fact no vowel sound is heard.

On the other hand, I've heard one or two speakers pronounce ani with a noticeably palatal consonant sound — almost like [aɲ] (as if it were a French word agne). And a couple of speakers I've heard actually did seem to pronounce a regular, voiced [i] vowel — albeit a very short vowel, not as definite or long as you would expect with anii (= the years). I imagine this may be a matter of regional variation; as far as I can tell, all the TVR announcers are native speakers, and I assume they've been trained to eliminate any obvious regionalisms in their speech, though presumably some less noticeable regional features might remain.

I suspect at least some people who read a description of Romanian final, non-syllabic i as causing "palatalization" of the preceding consonant may think of Russian palatalization, or Slavic iotation — whereas, in fact, the Romanian phenomenon is something quite different. Comments?

Richwales 21:57, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

About the pronunciation of ani, I think both the stronger palatalization and the re-voicing of [i] are not as much a sign of regional speech as they are a way to stress the difference between the words an (singular year) and ani (plural years). Especially the TVR announcers -- who by the way are a bit of what BBC announcers are for British English, in that they are trained to articulate all sounds in an overcorrect manner -- may tend to voice the final i. You won't find such an enhanced pronunciation in natural speech though. --AdiJapan 16:54, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

...I Scott nesilabic, is the Romanian name for this, In Moldova, it was represented by b, the soft sign in Cyrillic. ani AHb It's when one has final ii and iii, that the vowel reemerges. Mergi,the vowel is said, fiind,( fi+ind) Ciuperci , mushroom, (chew perch) one learns as he goes. Athanasius V (talk) 00:06, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Note that Polish for Bucareşti is Bukareszć, not -eść... Athanasius V (talk) 00:10, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

No, it's not. It's Bukareszt (with a hard dental /t/), with the stress on /a/: [buˈkarɛʂt]. Sol505000 (talk) 22:23, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Romanian â / î

All the descriptions I've ever read about the â / î vowel say that the sound is [ɨ] — a close central unrounded vowel, somewhat similar to [ɪ] (as in American English "hit").

My impression of the sound, from hearing it, is completely different. To me, it sounds a lot more like [ɯ] — a close back unrounded vowel, similar to [u], but pronounced with relaxed, unrounded lips.

My own /u/ phoneme (in English) has both rounded and unrounded allophones. Accordingly, my reflexive response when hearing Romanian is to confuse â with u. When I hear the word România, for example, part of my brain is convinced that the speaker said *Romunia. I am not at all tempted to think that I heard *Rominia.

I can hear (and, I believe, reproduce) the difference in these two sounds by now, but it took a lot of effort, culminating in an "aha!" moment of sudden realization.

Is a (mis?)pronounciation of â like [ɨ] perceived, by native speakers of Romanian, as a feature of any particular regional or foreign accent?

Richwales 08:16, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Are you dumb? You are not supposed to hear "Rominia" whatever that is because you are confusing sounds and letters. English short i is not the cardinal vowel [i]. And how do people know how "Romunia" sounds to you. There is still a problem with ă and â/î. If you can't even distinguish between these two, the discussion about the exact quality of the vowel is pointless. --94.218.181.168 (talk) 19:21, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

The statement that [ɨ] is similar to the [ɪ] in "hit" is for English speakers unfamiliar with the soiund. [ɪ] is the closest English sound. I'd say that if you're more familiar with [ɯ] then that is a better approximation since it is even closer to [ɨ], simply fronted a bit. In English dialects that contrast the second vowel in the pair rosa's and roses, the e in roses is [ɨ]. AEuSoes1 00:31, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

The Romanian dictionary I have (DEX online) states that î/â is a close central unrounded vowel, that is, [ɨ] (in original: vocală închisă, nerotunjită, din seria medială). However, different languages seem to have different versions of this sound. For example the Romanian [ɨ] is not the same as the Russian [ɨ], which to my ears sounds closer to [i], but then again the article on Russian phonology says that ы and и are allophones, and that they tend to merge into [ɪ].

An argument that could support the classification as a central vowel is the fact that [ɨ] fits nicely in the series of central unrounded vowels a - ă - â (phonetically [a] - [ə] - [ɨ]).

However, as if to support Richwales' observation that it could actually be a back vowel, the best way I found to explain the articulation of Romanian î/â is, as I wrote in this article, by pronouncing [i] and then trying to pronounce [u] without rounding the lips.

Again in support of Richwales' observation it may be interesting to note that the transliteration of Romanian sounds into Japanese (which also lacks [ɨ]) is done by equating î/â with /u/ -- or I should say Japanese /u/, a close back compressed vowel, which is not very different from English [ʊ] in book. --AdiJapan 17:58, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Aeusoes1, why are you reverting my edits to this section? Whoever wrote this part of the article does not understand the difference between [fəˈnɛˌɾɪks] and /fɔwnɑlɑdʒi/. And why are you hounding an article on a tongue that you don't claim to speak at all? --DJ1AM (talk) 00:05, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm reverting your changes regarding slashes and brackets as well as your use of ü which is either non-standard IPA or unhelpful for the lay reader. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:15, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Then you clearly do not understand phonology if you do not see the reason for using brackets instead of slashes. And any linguist in California can tell you that speaking English we almost never realize the back round tense vowel as [u], as [ʉ] is a more accurate description of the sound, [ü] being an appropriate compromise. And the "lay reader" has the example that follows the symbol to clarify what the sound is. --DJ1AM (talk) 08:19, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't have to be an idiot to disagree with you. That particular paragraph is not the place for bracketed phones of English. The slashes offer a broad transcription that applies to all dialects of English. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 14:12, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

When discussing produced sounds, brackets need to be used. That section only discusses the phonetic features of [ɨ] in a way that is understandable to English speakers. Slashes should not be used because mental representations of these sounds, for a romɨn or English, have little to do with the phonetics of [ɨ]. And broad transcription can also be used with phonetic transcription. -- DJ1AM (talk) 16:59, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

A good compromise might be to take the IPA out and just say the vowels of ease and boot, but why is that paragraph even there? There isn't a guide in Russian phonology, Polish phonology, or in the phonology sections of other languages and it has a strong how-to guide tone to it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:58, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

You're right. That section does sound informal anyway; it probably should be taken out. The articles that specifically address these types of phones would probably be the more appropriate place to have that type of information. Somewhere in the article's page, there should be a link to the page for [ɨ], or at least for the IPA. -- DJ1AM (talk) 20:04, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Very good. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:15, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I believe this vowel exists in Welsh but also probably more relevantly in Turkish 194.176.105.138 (talk) 13:43, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

To say that [ɨ]is "exceptionally rare in Indo-European Languages is wrong: it is found inRusssian,Ukrainian,Belorusssian,Polish,& Welsh. If the Romanian were this vowel,they would have written in so,as in Russian,but the Cyrillic version of Romanian used a vowel which looks like ...î....I would say that it is the same as Turkish ı& Bulgarian Ъ,that is [ɯ]101.171.127.231 (talk) 14:56, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

/ø/

Dispite what the dictionary says, I don't think I ever heard *anyone* using /ø/ when pronouncing Romanian words.

pasteuriza /pas.tø.riˈza/

The common pronunciation is /pas.te.u.ri.za/.

bleu /blø/ (light blue),

Common pronunciation /bleo/, with /eo/ as in Gheorghe.

bogdan 09:42, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

You don't hear them often anyway. But no, I'm sure I have heard them pronounced "correctly". Personally, in normal conditions, I think I pronounce /pas.te.u.riˈza/, although if I think of it etymologically it sounds wrong. On the other hand I pronounce /blø/; hearing someone saying /ble̯o/ strikes me as too careless.

Anyway, I retouched the article to make it clear that this vowel is not as common as the others. — AdiJapan ☎ 11:23, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Native English Speakers

The article says that the close central unrounded vowel /ɨ/ might represent a problem for English speakers. Why English speakers in particular? It's true that it's not an English phoneme, but neither is it a German, French, Spanish, Italian or Scandinavian phoneme. I suggest changed the phrase to the close central unrounded vowel /ɨ/ might represent a problem for speakers of most other European languages JdeJ 08:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Because the reader is assumed to speak English. The paragraph is an attempt to give the reader an understanding of the vowels of the language. I'm a bit iffy about the instructional tone but I wouldn't know any other non-instructional way to enlighten the reader except to point out the rosa's/roses distinction. AEuSoes1 08:28, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

1. A significant portion, possibly even a majority, of users of the English Wikipedia are not native English speakers.

2. Even if they were, it would still be more in line with an encyclopedia to state that the vowel is not found in many other languages, now it gives the impression that its missing is something uniquely English. JdeJ 09:25, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Apparantly you missed my joke. It would be a bit of a stretch to assume that the readers of English Wikipedia did not speak English. If you think it's also important to mention the fact that it's rare among neighboring European languages don't let me stop you, but I find comparing the phonemic inventory of Romanian to that of English in an English encyclopedia to be perfectly fine and certainly not unencyclopedic. AEuSoes1 10:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I never joke when it comes to Romanian phonology ;-) I rewrote the sentence in a way that should be fine JdeJ 11:25, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

When I wrote that paragraph I meant that among all Romanian vowels this is the only one not close enough to any English vowel, and I thought that was relevant because I was addressing an English speaking readership (native or not). Well, you figured that out. I decided that mentioning the Rosa's - roses trick would clarify things only for a part of all native English speakers and even fewer of the non-natives. I could have referred the reader to the similar vowel in Russian or Polish, but again such an explanation would have been quite unsuccessful. That's why I started from a tabula rasa and described the sound in a way that I thought was accessible to a wider audience.

If you guys are aware of any better description of /ɨ/, you are my guests. I also don't mind if you fix the "instructional tone"; I chose to address the reader directly, although I knew this was against Wikipedia's recommendations, but hopefully there are better ways. — AdiJapan ☎ 16:51, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

R

I am by no means a specialist in phonetics, but as a native Romanian speaker, I just realized that I pronounce 'r' more like what seems to me to be an alveolar tap. I think this is more general though. Shouldn't we then transcribe the Romanian 'r' phonetically as 'ɾ', since 'r' in IPA would be an alveolar trill? Waardijner 00:16, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

There is a basic difference between trills and taps (see Trill consonant and Flap consonant for details). Romanian /r/ is a trill, because the tongue is just placed against the alveolar ridge and it's the air flow that moves the tongue, whereas in a tap the tongue is moved by its own muscles. Romanian /r/ is indeed most of the time pronounced with a single period, which makes it similar to a tap, but trills don't necessarily have more than one period. Besides, Romanian /r/ can be pronounced with more than one period --- that is, it can be an unquestionable alveolar trill --- without a change in meaning (thus single- and multiple-period realizations of /r/ are allophones in Romanian), as opposed for example to Spanish where there are minimal pairs such as caro vs. carro. Note that taps can never have more than one period.

All works on Romanian phonology and phonetics use the symbol r for this sound, both phonetically and phonologically. — AdiJapan ☎ 04:14, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining that. It looks like I need a lot more practising. I wonder still: were somebody to use a ɾ, would it be noticeable in any immediate way to other speakers? Waardijner 13:00, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Not really, at least to most listeners. If a speaker used an alveolar flap instead of a trill, probably the possibility of confusion between /r/ and /l/ would be slightly higher (because /l/ is a sort of flap), so rac might sound a bit like lac, but otherwise you could still have a comfortable conversation with that speaker. Personally I haven't met anyone to pronounce /r/ as a flap though. Actually many of us have some kind of small speech defects, but we get used to ignoring them, both as speakers and as listeners. As you probably know, quite a few Romanians use the uvular trill for /r/ (Nicolae Ceauşescu and Nicu Alifantis come to mind), and other than sounding a bit "funny", phonologically speaking there is no problem. — AdiJapan ☎ 14:57, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree (as a native speaker), though I suspect it's harder to pronounce consonant sequences like “tr” with a tap than with a trill. (I can't seem to figure out how to do it myself; trying to do it leads to a trill by instinct. If it's possible, it might sound a bit strange.)

Consonant table

Is there any particular reason why these are not included in it? The /iw/ <> /ju/ distinction and the /e.u/ mentioned in the [ø] discussion belo imply that at least /w/ must be considered a separate phoneme from /u/. I dunno whether eg. /i.a e.a o.a/ <> /ja e̯a o̯a/ contrasts exists (I do not speak Romanian at all), but if they did, those would also have to be added, bringing the consonant count to 26. --Tropylium 19:54, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

In principle you are right, but at least in the phonology descriptions of Romanian that I have seen, all the semivowels and the non-syllabic vowels are treated as variants of their respective full vowels, and never considered along with the consonants. This must be because in Romanian these phonemes are "unstable", in the sense that they often become full vowels during morphological proceses. To give an example, cai /kaj/ means horses, but it becomes cailor /'ka.i.lor/ in the genitive-dative form. Similarly, nori /norʲ/ (clouds) becomes norilor /'no.ri.lor/ in the genitive-dative. So both the semivowel /j/ and the palatalization /ʲ/ switch into vowel /i/, and the same is valid for all semivowels, which makes Romanian semivowels more vowel-like than in other languages.

Moreover, there are phonological descriptions of Romanian in which the semivowels and the palatalization are considered mere allophones of their respective vowels.

Phonetically speaking you are right, semivowels behave like consonants, in Romanian just as in other languages. But this article doesn't go deep enough to reveal much of the phonetics of Romanian, and stays more at the phonological level. — AdiJapan ☎ 16:08, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Or maybe the difthongs are usually analyzed as phonemes on their own right? That would also explain the [iw] <> [ju] distinction... or maybe those two ARE allophones, even (preconsonantal <> prevocalic/morpheme-final?) Hard for me to tell without checking some professional analyses, really. --Tropylium 17:51, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Diphthongs and triphthongs are analyzed as sequences of vowels and semivowels in all treatments of Romanian I have seen.

However, in a Romanian phonology where dipthongs are considered separate phonemes, I think you could be right about /ju/ and /iw/. That is because depending on the position within the word and the presence of the stress, one can always find out which of the two occors: In word-final positions and bearing the stress, it is always /iw/. Otherwise, it is always /ju/. Stress is important, because there are words like uliu and opiu (goshawk and opium), which end in /ju/, but which have the stress elsewhere. Things get complicated when you bring the hiatus /i.u/ in the story. Anyway, I've never seen this published so I can't include it in the article.

In usual analyses, the sequences /iw/ and /ju/ are not considered allophones, since there are minimal pairs that prevent this, for example /ˈʃtiw.kə/ and /ˈʃtju.kə/ (ştiu că and ştiucă), meaning "I know (that)" and "pike (Esox lucius)", respectively. — AdiJapan ☎ 09:18, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Diphthongs

According to Chitoran (2002)

The glide [w], however, never occurs in a word onset (there are no words beginning orthographically with the sequence <ua>). As a syllable onset, [w] is always followed by the vowel [a], whereas [j] can also be followed by other vowels. As a syllable coda, [w] only surfaces in word-final position (bow 'ox'), never word-internally, except for exactly two words (awgust 'August' and awgur 'augur').

This means that plouând would actually be /plow'ɨnd/, ouând is/ow'ɨnd/, două is /dow'ə/, etc. Am I in error or should we change the article accordingly? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:44, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

That wouldn't be correct, because whenever two vowels are separated by a consonant (or a semivowel), in syllabification the consonant always goes in the same syllable with the latter vowel. This is a much stronger rule, with no exceptions whatsoever, than Chiţoran's observations. I'm pretty sure she just overlooked those rare occurrences of /w/ as a syllable onset followed by other vowels than /a/. — AdiJapan 16:27, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, maximizing the onset. I'm sceptical that Chiţoran simply overlooked these examples. Could it be the information you're relying on is a study of another dialect? Here's a table she used in describing the distribution of the two approximants

header 1	[j]	[w]
word onset	yes	-
Syllable onset postvocalic	yes	-*
Syllable onset postconsonantal	yes	yes
word-internal coda	yes	-
word-final coda	yes	yes

*Except at the end of a word, before the feminine desinence vowel [-ə] or the definite article [-a]: /ˈrow-ə/ 'dew' (indef.), /ˈrow-a/ 'dew' (def.).

Which I think would actually make plouând trisyllabic. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:47, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I replaced your example poluare in the article, because in this word ua is a hiatus. This can be verified explicitely in several dictionaries: poluare, polua. (In Romanian dictionaries this is indicated by "Pr.: -lu-a-" or "sil. -lu-a-", where the abbreviations mean pronunciation and syllabification, respectively). In a fast-paced pronunciation the hiatus may indeed become indistinguishable from a diphthong, but for the purpose of this article the example would be too ambiguous.

I'll be back with comments about plouînd. — AdiJapan 07:24, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't able to find that table in Chiţoran's book, at least not in the copy available on Google Scholar (could you tell me the page number?). But just from what you say I see there are two discrepancies between the table and the text. On one hand the text says the only vowel that can follow /w/ is /a/, while the table also mentions /ə/. Also, the table says that there is no instance of /w/ as a word-internal coda, but in the text there are two examples of such occurrences (she says "exactly two", but there are also others, such as in borrowings and names of foreign origin, e.g. cauper, trauler, Pauker --- for the first two you can verify the syllabification in the same dictionaries I mentioned above). I'm not sure how to understand this apparent sloppiness of Chiţoran; it may be that she was after other aspects of the semivowel /w/ and the few exceptions were not really relevant for her.

By the way, the note at the end of the table --- /ˈrow-ə/ 'dew' (indef.), /ˈrow-a/ 'dew' (def.) --- looks very strange. The hyphen in the phonemic transcriptions couldn't possibly indicate the syllable break. In DEX 1998 (one of the main Romanian dictionaries) the syllabification is given as ro-uă.

To answer your questions:

• No, /w/ is not a matter of dialect; I'm not aware of any differences between local speeches in what concerns /w/; besides, I speak standard Romanian as my native dialect.
• The word plouînd has only two syllables.

— AdiJapan 09:59, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

The table and text both come from Chiţoran's JIPA article (not her book, though she makes similar claims in both).

What makes this even more complicated is that she says on page 205 "both [French and Romanian] have a glide formation process, which turns a high vowel into a glide when followed by another vowel. Glide formation applies if the onset contains only one segment but it is blocked if the onset already has two segments." Not sure if this means onsetless syllables are included. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 10:18, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I see you're trying to find a minimal pair for diphthongs /wa/ and /o̯a/, but that's not an easy task, because the two appear in different phonetic contexts: /wa/ usually occurs after a vowel, while /o̯a/ after a consonant. The word cuarţ is a rare exception, and again for the purpose of this article it is not a good example. It is a neologism that is still in process of being "naturalized"; as such, none of the 7 dictionaries I have access to gives the pronunciation. Take for instance the very similar word cuantă (quantum), for which one dictionary says it is syllabified as cu-an-tă, while two others say cuan-tă.

I suggest going back to ziua, which at least has a definite unambiguous pronunciation and is not a special case. (Anyway, the form cuarţu does not exist.) — AdiJapan 10:25, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I found a better example to compare /o̯a/ and /wa/: găoace and băcăuan. In both words the diphthong comes after vowel /ə/ so as to allow comparison in very similar phonetic contexts, including the stress. Another good choice could be the pair vioară (violin) - înziuat (to dawn, p. participle). — AdiJapan 08:05, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes/no question intonation

In non-emphatic yes/no questions the pitch rises at the end of the sentence until the last stressed syllable. If unstressed syllables follow, they often have a falling intonation, but this is not a rule. — Ai stins lumina? [ai stins lu↗mi↘na] (Have you turned off the lights?) — Da. (Yes.)

According to Grice, Ladd and Arvaniti (2000), p.156-157), this pattern is in fact somewhat marked or emphatic (it "strongly focuses on the verb"). They say that the non-emphatic, neutral pattern is, instead, one that has low pitch stretching until the last stressed syllable and then a final rise (I suppose the transcription in the system used here would be [ai stins lumi↗na]). --91.148.159.4 (talk) 22:27, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Again diphthongs

only /e̯a/ and /o̯a/ can follow an obstruent-liquid cluster such as in broască ('frog') and dreagă ('to mend').

but isn't the îu in /brɨu/ following an obstruent-liquid cluster (br)? bogdan (talk)

In her phonological approach, Chiţoran considers that Romanian has only two "true" diphthongs, /e̯a/ and /o̯a/, whereas other vowel-semivowel or semivowel-vowel sequences are just that: sequences. For example, in brîu /brɨw/ the semivowel /w/ just happens to come after /ɨ/. On the other hand, there is no Romanian word with a sequence like /OrjV/ or /OljV/, where O is an obstruent and V is any vowel, and that makes a clear distinction between two sorts of rising diphthongs.

Apparently Chiţoran disregards the diphthong /e̯o/, although it too can follow obstruent-liquid clusters, such as in pleoşti.

The problem is that the article now presents two points of view --- Chiţoran's two-diphthong system and the traditional many-diphthong system --- in a confused mixture, without specifically stating which is which. — AdiJapan 03:50, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation of sunt

There is an anonymous user who keeps adding the word sunt as an example for the vowel /ɨ/. The source provided for this was [2], but it doesn't say anything about pronunciation. As far as I know, the most recent normative works for Romanian (including the Academy's Grammar) state that the word sunt is correctly pronounced /sunt/ (even though the majority of speakers pronounce it /sɨnt/). I would ask the anonymous user to specify a scholarly source for sunt pronounced /sɨnt/.

Even if such a source does exist, I still think that the example is misleading, precisely because of the controversy. The readers need to have simple regular examples of where each sound occurs. This is an article on phonology. — AdiJapan 10:09, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I completely agree. Also, anonymous user seems to ignore the three-example-per-vowel layout, which gives a certain consistency to the table.

That said, if the user does find a source, it would be fine to mention it somewhere either here or at Romanian alphabet, right? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:19, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

He probably won't. In fact, as I wrote above, according to the normative body for the Romanian language (the Romanian Academy), sunt is pronounced /sunt/. Here is the reference:

• Academia Română, Gramatica limbii române, vol. I „Cuvântul”, p. 566.

Relevant statement:

"În pronunţia (şi grafia) neliterară actuală, neregularitatea lui a fi a devenit şi mai mare, prin amestecul radicalului de curând recomandat (sunt, suntem, sunteţi) cu radicalul normei anterioare (sânt, sântem, sânteţi) [...]."

That is:

"In non-standard pronunciation (and spelling), the irregularity of a fi has become even wider, by mixing the recently recommended radical (sunt, suntem, sunteţi) with the radical of the previous norm (sânt, sântem, sânteţi) [...]."

Note that each spelling (sunt and sânt) is obviously meant to correspond to its respective pronunciation, and no mention is made that either of them departs from the regular reading rules for Romanian. On the contrary, the text suggests that spelling follows pronunciation. (In practice, the spelling sânt is almost never used, partly because people are taught that it is incorrect, and partly because it's not standard. It can occur in literary texts where the author wants to suggest a non-standard pronunciation, or in grammatical descriptions such as the one above, or simply as a spelling mistake.)

What the anonymous user might be trying to say is that, although most people follow the new recommended norm in writing (sunt), most of them still actually pronounce /sɨnt/, which is true. But I don't think that is relevant in this article. — AdiJapan 18:32, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Why isn't it relevent? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:43, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

This article is about the phonology of Romanian. The fact that there are irregularities in the spelling with respect to the pronunciation is relevant to the writing rules, not really to the phonology.

But I can agree that, for a language with a rather regular phonemic orthography such as Romanian, a mention could be made for some of the most prominent exceptions to the phonemic spelling rules. For that purpose I think a separate section would be ideal, while leaving the pronunciation examples as simple as possible. (At ro.wp we have such a section in the article on phonemic orthography: [3].) The best place for such a section would be in an article on the Romanian orthography, which is now a redirect to a section in the Romanian alphabet. A separate article on the Romanian orthography, including its history, would be very useful, but that's quite an undertaking and I don't have enough time for it right now. — AdiJapan 08:07, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I guess I was just thinking there might be relevent reasons for the variation in pronunciation. Why not just rename Romanian alphabet to Romanian orthography? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:31, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

There are reasons for writing sunt and pronouncing /sɨnt/, but they are mostly... political. Before 1993 most Romanian speakers would pronounce /sɨnt/ and write accordingly sînt. The Romanian Academy voted a spelling reform (to justify its legitimacy after the end of the Communist regime, and against the advice of the majority of linguists), so the old spelling sunt was reinstated (mind you, sînt had not been invented by the Communists). Obviously, the pronunciation could not change overnight like the spelling norm did. That's how we ended up with this discrepancy.

Such details are highly relevant in a future "Romanian orthography" article, but not in the one on the alphabet (which should only concern the letters themselves) and certainly not here in the phonology article. — AdiJapan 15:46, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Though why not rename Romanian alphabet to Romanian orthography? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me to have two articles that cover basically the same thing. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:16, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I see things like this: the alphabet is a tool, and the orthography is a rule of how to use that tool. In an article on orthography, the alphabet would be covered by just a small part, something like in Spanish orthography. But the current Romanian alphabet contains too little information on spelling (specifically only the section "Î versus Â") to justify the title "Romanian orthography"; it simply talks about the letters, while for orthography we need to show how those letters are used and how the usage has changed over time. I think French alphabet and French orthography show a better way to discuss the two subjects, separately. I don't think it would be appropriate to talk about the exact shape of the diacritic below Ş and Ţ or about the HTML encodings (aspects pertaining to typography) in an article on orthography.

Sure thing, the two subjects are very much connected and they could indeed be fitted in one article, although I'm afraid that article would eventually become so large that it would require splitting. I think we are better off keeping them separate from the beginning. — AdiJapan 07:58, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Regional use the voiced velar fricative

Hello! I'm not totally sure what to do about something missing from this page:

I'm a native Romanian. My mother was born in a village of northern Dobrudja, and I nearby; I lived there for the first few years of my life (afterwards I moved to Constanța) and since my grandparents and other relatives remained there I of course kept visiting the are.

There is a particularity of pronunciation in the village (and, I assume, nearby) that I've never seen mentioned: In some cases, “v” before “i” is realized as, as far as I can tell, the voiced velar fricative. In fact, the only words I've heard pronounced that way are from the word families of “vin” (wine), “viță” (grape vine) and “vițel” (calf, immature cow). These particular words I remember very well, since I kind of liked the unusual sound when I was little, and my mother and I still use them metonymically to refer (affectionately) to the area. I haven't lived enough there to know if it happens with other instances of “vi” or even “v” in general. (There are some “v”'s where I'm sure it never happens, and even for those examples I know it didn't happen all the time, nor for all speakers.)

Because the sound is an oddity and I'm curious about such things I always looked for information about that, but I never found it mentioned anywhere. (I only arrived here because I noticed by accident that gamma is pronounced that way in modern Greek.)

A strange connection is that something similar appears to happen in Moldavia; there's a popular band that comes from Moldavia (Zdob și Zdub) and sing with a pronounced Moldavian accent, and I noticed in a song the pronunciation [ʒin] for “vin”. (To me it sounds as if the singer accentuates the word, as if he liked it for the same reason I do, but maybe it's a false impression caused by the song.)

Anyway, I've no idea what to do with this. I'm tented to add it myself as a note, though it's only “verifiable” in the sense that you can go there and listen to people. I'm not a phonology expert by any means, and I've no idea where to look for more information.

bogdanb (talk) 23:09, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it's not appropriate to add information that doesn't have any sourcing. I'll see what I can find, though. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:44, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with Bogdanb that the sound he describes is in fact used by Romanian speakers regionally. I have often heard it myself in Moldavia, as a replacement of [v], either occasionally for emphasis, or as a rule, in particular in old people's speech. As Bogdanb says, the replacement only occurs when [v] is followed by [i], which means that it's not really the voiced velar fricative being pronounced instead of [v], but its palatal counterpart [ʝ].

On the other hand I also agree with our friendly Aeusoes that we should first look for sources on this and then add the information (possibly in the "Other consonants" section). The article has already too many unsourced statements, and I'm to blame for most of them. Sources do exist, but the problem is that such details are not to be found in books for the general public, but in linguistic atlases and journals; unfortunately still very few of such materials are available online, which makes it virtually impossible for me to fix the problem. — AdiJapan 03:54, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

It seems like what we're actually talking about is Aromanian. One text that seems like it would talk about this is Structura aromanei actuale. Graiurile din Dobrougea. Texte dialectale (2007) by Nicolae Saramandu. Saramandu also wrote Cercetări asupra aromânei vorbite în Dobrogea (1972). Both works seem to talk specifically about Dobruja. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 07:31, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

No, that's something else altogether. Both Bogdanb and I were talking about regional pronunciations of Romanian, not about Aromanian. The difference between the two is large enough so that there is zero probability of misunderstanding. (Besides, Aromanian is not spoken in Moldavia.)

It is true though that Aromanian too has that sound in a part of its dialects, due to the Greek influence. However, the Aromanian [ɣ] ca occur both before front vowels and in other positions. See details (written in Aromanian, sorry) in this brief description of the Aromanian alphabet. A more detailed description is given in lessons 8 and 9 there. The sound [ɣ] is spelled in Aromanian either g or y (the current spelling rules are flexible, to accommodate dialectal differences). — AdiJapan 08:46, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, Bogdanb was talking about Dobrudja, which has a lot of Aromanian speakers. But I don't know a whole lot either way. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:48, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Mid front rounded vowel or Close-mid front rounded vowel?

Could /ø/ be like in Hungarian, a mid vowel? Romanian does not contrast mid-open with mid-close vowels. Jɑυмe (xarrades) 21:02, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

First of all, it's stated that /ø/ is not in the main vowel inventory, but only in loanwords. Therefore, there could potentially be a great deal of variation. But French was/is the second most spoken foreign language and most people know some basic pronunciation rules, and German is not far, surpassing French in Transylvania. Therefore, I would say it's the Close-mid front rounded vowel, or at least that's what I've heard so far. The Mid front rounded vowel (as I associate it having heard Hungarian and Turkish) seems a bit more open (and slightly backened). » byeee 02:57, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we can use logic to deduce it. We'd have to find phonetic data. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 03:52, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Where do you expect to find phonetic data on a phoneme that does not appear in the native language? As it is even written somewhere on wiki, spellings are mostly preserved (i.e. western), so are pronunciations (e.g. bleu). The pronunciation for the given phoneme (in this case, /ø/) is going to reflect the original (French or German since that is where the words originated from), thus Close-mid front rounded vowel. » byeee 05:46, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Romanian /e/ and /o/ are mid vowels and the language lacks any close-mid and open-mid vowels. It follows that it would be at least very surprising if /ø/ turned out to be close-mid. In fact many speakers, in particular those who don't speak French, German or Hungarian to any significant extent, are initially unable to pronounce /ø/ anyway, and replace it almost systematically with the diphthong /e̯o/; for instance many natives pronounce bleu as /ble̯o/. French and German words containing /ø/ and borrowed sufficiently early now have another vowel in that position, usually /e/; for example French chauffeur has become șofer /ʃoˈfer/ "driver" in Romanian.

As a native speaker, I pronounce Romanian /ø/ as a mid vowel. I speak French and understand the differences between the three similar sounds [ø ø̞ œ]. I can also tell you that Romanian speakers who haven't studied French phonetics will pronounce open-mid and close-mid vowels in French words identically, be they [e ɛ], [o ɔ] or [ø œ]. So the argument that the vowel height is somehow preserved from its origin fails. Sure, this doesn't qualify as anything else than original research, but I thought you might want to know.

Since we don't have sources (for rather obvious reasons), I think we should let the vowel height unspecified for /ø/, keeping in mind that it may very well be a mid vowel in the context of Romanian phonetics. — AdiJapan 07:06, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I only meant that explanation as an answer to Jaume87, and specified that it may vary. The close-mid was just my recommendation based on what I've heard (in the South mostly, to be exact). I don't think we really need to specify the vowel height in this case. It might also depend on the region - I've heard a pronounced open on some occasions. There's a lot of room for "wiggling" with such "evenly spread" vowels, I guess. » byeee 05:28, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Romanian /e/ and /o/ are mid vowels and the language lacks any close-mid and open-mid vowels. It follows that it would be at least very surprising if /ø/ turned out to be close-mid. /o/ and especially /ə/ are on the open-mid side of mid, per the vowel chart in Sarlin 2014. In that regard, Romanian /o/ is very much like the Slovak mid back rounded vowel. I find it unlikely that they and the front unrounded /e/ (and, by extension, its non-native rounded counterpart /ø/) don't vary in height at least somewhat. Sol505000 (talk) 19:40, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Vowels, diphtongs etc.

1. I don't get the part in the beginning with "two or four semivowels" (confusing for people: so is it 2 or is it 4?? nobody knows??). I presume it means j, w, and maybe e̯ and o̯?

So the first two are definitely in. It's been discussed before, and e̯ seems to fit the bill (and it's not /ʲæ/!). Now o̯ is a tough call, because there are no minimal pairs. And because, following the j-w-e̯ pattern, o̯ would sound unlike anything else. It's pretty clearly /wa/ in the speech of everybody I've heard so far.

If you can make the difference, please record yourself pronouncing oală and uală so everybody can understand the difference.

2. I'll also trust you that /o̯a/ is an unusual diphthong once you prove that it is indeed different from /wa/. In theory, yes, but not in any Romanian words containing the diphthong "ua" that I know of.

3 Moving on, why is /e̯a/ unusual while /e̯o/ is not? I agree that the second one is different from /ø/, so what makes it "not unusual"? I thought the e̯ was the unusual part here.

4. And still, you say Romanian has two diphthongs, probably copied from Chițoran, which (because is the only one who has published a Romanian phonology book in English) everybody seems to regard very highly (but there's a lot of I consider and Let's simplify things and say that... in her book). Yet if there's only 2, what's with the 20-something list after that?

5. Bla bla bla they appear only in stressed syllables. What about cártea (the book)??? It even has the special diphthong! Oh no!

6. Aand... zzz... can follow an obstruent-liquid cluster *what*? [oh yes] Please link to that because I'm sure a whole bunch of people will be confused. And I can think of a simpler explanation for that. The few words with obstruent-liquid-i/u-vowel have a hiatus instead (i.e. ob-stru-a). That proves what exactly? That ea and oa cannot form hiatuses? That can be traced back etymologically to é and ó. That these once-vowels evolved into diphthongs should not negate the status of other possible diphthongs.

7. Can the /uw/ diphthong be found elsewhere? Also, while I might believe the con-ti-nuu hyphenation under a verb hyphenation of con-ti-nua, DEXOnline lists the latter consistently as con-ti-nu-a. The first person singular is only once to be found in this form, and alas, not hyphenated. It will remain a mystery.

8. While we have such distinctions between /o̯a/ and /wa/, why not add /e̯ɨ/ in pe-între? Sounds exotic.

9. Impressionistically, the two pairs sound very similar to native speakers. And why not to you, dear Miss to whom almost all the citations in this article are owed?

10. First she says that only two are real diphthongs, and then she bashes those too (and equates /o̯a/ and /wa/ in the process)? If judging according to Diphthongs, then /o̯a/ (voal), /e̯a/ (beat), /ja/ (chiar), /wa/ (luat), /e̯o/ (fleoșc), /jo/ (chior), /aj/ (raid), /ju/ (chiul) seem to be the diphthongs at least in some words. But, /ja/ is definitely a diphthong in iar (historically ér). Spanish phonology seems not to be that harsh, but that's doesn't mean it's correct (although I would assume so for the third most spoken language).

PS for 5. It's more likely the other way around: the stressed vowel evolved into a diphthong. » byeee 05:52, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't know of any systematic approach of the Romanian phonology that answers all these questions. The claims Chițoran makes might be different from the claims of traditional works not because the data are different, but because the concepts being used are different. What Chițoran understands by diphthong is probably a unit sound, a phoneme, an underlying sound, while in traditional works a diphthong is merely a vowel-semivowel or semivowel-vowel sequence, that is, two phonemes. If my understanding is correct, Chițoran claims that /e̯a/ and /o̯a/ are single underlying sounds (no matter how they manifest themselves in articulation), while all other combinations are sequences.

I also don't know if we can speak of any consensus among scholars regarding all aspects of the Romanian phonology.

This article was originally written along the traditional views, and later modified to accommodate Chițoran's work, and I admit the result is far from optimum. If you can help, please do. — AdiJapan 07:32, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, indeed, it seems to be written from two clashing points of view and it doesn't quite satisfy either the goat or the cabbage.

That's also true, in "traditional" works there is only a contrast between hiatuses and diphthongs. Her claim is most likely based on the origin of the words (namely é and ó). But, since there is not a 1:1 correspondence between any orthographies, it would follow that in some cases /ja/ is a diphthong, in others a glide-vowel sequence, as per ér > iar; following e > é > ěa > ǐa (under rapid speech; the closeness of the latter two is most obvious in Moldova, where Russian я is interpreted as both Romanian ěa and ǐa).

That makes things even more confusing (and the pronunciation is in no way different between é-originated ǐ and otherwise). And the fact that the "transitional" alphabet proposed ǐ (for /j/ and /ʲ/) and ǔ (for /w/ and /ʷ/) as separate letters makes it unclear if we can say the language has true glides or not. As they were additions to the alphabet, their purpose could have merely been to make orthography match pronunciation. I would gladly help, but so far I haven't seen any works that consider diphthongs the "official" way. Another case regarding #7 above, since /ʷ/ disappeared as a phoneme from the language (and its usage was exclusively in word-final position), makes it unlikely that /uw/ is found as a real diphthong (or vowel-glide sequence, as may be the case).

I'm not looking for consensus, I'm trying to make the page less confusing. And part of it strikes me as PoV as well.

I'll make some small changes to try to accommodate both views in a slightly friendlier way, please feel free to improve. » byeee 05:28, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I reformulated some sentences so they mention both points of view (diphthong vs. vowel-glide), as well as mentioned the way it is taught in schools (and it has not changed in the mean time).

I added clarification on /ø/, and I am unsure whether I should do the same with /y/, that is pronounced sometimes as /ěu/ or even /ju/ (there's another parallel with Cyrillic ю).

I removed the part with /o̯a/ doesn't appear in the final syllable of a prosodic word, there are no monosyllabic words with /o̯a/ because I don't see the relevance of it- there's voal, doar, fermoar, and a bunch of French borrowings ending in /'ǒar/ (and actually, trotuar is irrelevant because it is spelled with u, not o). So trottoir and fermoir give rise to /ǒa/, respectively /wa/ so ǒa does not sound anything like ǔa and is not a diphthong in such words because ... it's not fair?

Bottom line: is the same pronunciation absolutely irrelevant when deciding whether a given phoneme (or set of) is a diphthong or not? » byeee 06:28, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I've added a few more details about /ø/ and /y/. I'm not sure what you mean by "doing the same" for /y/, since that vowel doe not have the pronunciation variability of /ø/, and the variability it does have is already mentioned.

Regarding your comments, from the viewpoint of phonology the spelling and the etymology are not really relevant. What matters is how those words are actually pronounced and what (linguists think) the underlying representations the speakers have of those words. Also, there is no "official" linguistics. — AdiJapan 09:56, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I've restored the statement about /o̯a/ in final syllables. The exceptions provided are, according to Chițoran, not actually exceptions. If there are sources that disagree with her, it would be nice to use them in the article but we shouldn't take out her arguments just because they might be wrong. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:25, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, I meant that the view taught in schools only distinguishes diphthongs and hiatuses.

First of all, two TO four, because you're discounting the case where there's e̯, j and w/o̯.

Look, I appreciate you trying to help, but could you actually go edit things for a language you actually speak or at least hear on a regular basis? Thank you. Why is there are no monosyllabic words with /o̯a/ useful for anything? As said before (and should you READ too) the word trotuar has UA in it, not OA. She argues that a lot of things are rather glide-vowel sequences, and it's linked to enough times for anyone interested in her view to find it.

And she can keep her pompous impresionistically for her book, but WP does not need it. » byeee 13:29, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

This section under Palatalized consonants is confusing. However, /sʲ/, /tʲ/, and /dʲ/ become [ɕ], [tsʲ], and [zʲ], respectively,[17] with very few phonetically justified exceptions. I presume it means plurals, right? I don't get it given the context. » byeee 13:42, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

The phrase "two to four" in that context suggests that there are some analyses where there are two semivowels, some where there are three semivowels, and some where there are four semivowels. The former and latter are correct, as established here, but I know of no analysis where there are three semivowels. This is why I changed it back to "or." Are you saying there's an analysis that does not contrast [w] with [o̯]? Who makes this analysis?

Similarly, the phrase "native speakers find the two pairs very similar" is different from "Impressionistically, the two pairs sound very similar to native speakers." In the latter, the meaning is that native speakers have difficulty hearing the difference, even if there is a difference in their cognitive grammar. In the former, it's not clear whether this is impressionistic, whether there's an actual merger going on, or what. If you find the phrase "impressionistic" to be undesirable for an article geared toward a less academic audience, maybe a different reword is in order. Or perhaps, simply taking out the word "impressionistically" will work fine.

If you'd like, you can take out trotuar or replace it with another word. The underlying point is still the same and I don't think you've addressed my concerns. It seems that you have a problem with Chițoran but would rather not provide additional sourcing. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 14:43, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Alveolar consonants

About Wikipedia's: "/t/ and /d/ are only similar, not identical, to their English counterparts. While in English they are alveolar, pronounced by touching the alveolar ridge with the tip of the tongue, in Romanian and other Romance languages they are dental, obtained by touching the roof of the mouth just behind the teeth with the flat of the tongue. The same remark is valid for consonants /n/, /s/, and /z/, although the difference is not as obvious."

That is partially true. I quote B.Collins, "Practical Phonetics and Phonology": "The plosives /t,d/ are advanced to dental when adjacent to dental fricatives,i.e articulated with the tongue-tip behind the teeth: eighth, hid them. The same goes for /n,l/: anthem,both numbers,,healthy,faithless." Bogdanno (talk) 20:44, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I've changed the wording to "usually alveolar" to reflect your comment. — AdiJapan 07:05, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

It must've referred to the most common allophone. You know, the one that doesn't require a following dental consonant. Sol505000 (talk) 20:07, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Native speaker

As a native speaker, I make the following suggestions:
1. ș

• Is: [ ʃ ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_palato-alveolar_sibilant
• Should be: [ ʂ ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_retroflex_fricative

2. j

• Is: [ ʒ ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_palato-alveolar_sibilant
• Should be: [ ʐ ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_retroflex_sibilant

3. î/â

• Is: [ ɨ ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_central_unrounded_vowel
• Should be:
  • [ ɘ ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-mid_central_unrounded_vowel
    OR
  • [ ɯ ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_back_unrounded_vowel

All native speakers which I have asked to listen to the samples on those URLs concur.
[ ʃ ] and [ ʒ ] exist in regional variants (graiuri) but not in what we consider to be the correct spoken language.

ConciliatorClaw (talk) 20:45, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

While native speaker input is appreciated, being a native speaker is not a replacement for reliable sources when it comes to such detailed phonetics. Still, it wouldn't be the first time a sound typically transcribed as [ʃ] turned out to be retroflex. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 21:34, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

My bad, Î/â is mostly [ ʉ ] instead of the other forms I suggested above. But it is never [ ɨ ], which has an "i" sound to it, completely unfamiliar to me as a native speaker.

Regarding the others:

It might be a reasonable confusion if there were multiple accepted sounds corresponding to that letter, including those mentioned on this page, but the thing is that the sounds mentioned here are not part of what we learned as "correct Romanian".

I just can't see how someone could have made the confusion, especially if he/she is a native speaker. The source that is most used is Chițoran (http://www.seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/stand_alone_romanian.pdf), but I see she uses "[ y ]; vowel, central, close, unrounded;" to represent î. Apart from the mistake ("closed", not "close"), [y] actually stands for "Close front rounded vowel". This at least shows some sloppy work on the part of the source author AND/OR incompatible IPA notation.

For "z", she says "[ ʒ ]; consonant, fricative, dental, voiced; like z in zero". But Wikipedia mentions [ ʒ ] as a "Voiced palato-alveolar sibilant". It is like the "z" in "zero" but she used the wrong notation.

For "j" she again mentions "[ ʒ ];" but gives a different description: "consonant, fricative, prepalatal, voiced; like s in pleasure".

So I question the quality of the sources, but I am not yet able to provide better ones. In all Romanian sources I could find, they don't use standard IPA notation, but their own.

On the Polish phonology page, if we take a look at the consonants we see a proper correspondence: Polish sz [ ʂ ] = Romanian ș. Polish ż / rz [ ʐ ] = Romanian j. This as opposed to the Czech language ž [ ʒ ] and š [ ʃ ] respectively. Any native speaker can attest that the Romanian ș and j are much more similar to the Polish sz and ż than to the Czech ž and š.

ConciliatorClaw (talk) 06:33, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

That document you've linked to isn't authored by Chițoran. This article uses three sources from Chițoran, listed at the bottom. One of them is available online here. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 12:57, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Some Romanian dictionaries give phonetic descriptions of sounds. You just have to look up those respective letters:

• ș is described as "consoană constrictivă prepalatală surdă" --- voiceless fricative prepalatal consonant, where prepalatal must be understood as being equivalent with postalveolar. Similarly at the entry for j [4]. Anyway, Romanian [ʃ] and [ʒ] are virtually identical with their English counterparts, and as far as I know nobody calls those retroreflex.
• î and â are both described as "vocală închisă, nerotunjită, din seria medială" --- closed unrounded vowel in the central series, and that means [ɨ].

I've read several Romanian phonetics and phonology books and I've never come across any mention that the sounds written ș and j are retroreflex, or that î/â is either back or rounded or close-mid (I didn't quite get which of them ConciliatorClaw was trying to choose). — AdiJapan 17:38, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh, be careful with comparisons among languages and the non-pedantic IPA transcriptions that are used for them. The Polish sz and ż / rz are traditionally described as retroflex, but the Poles I've heard speak hardly retroflex them, if at all; they sound much more like the German, English and French /ʃ/ (...which are not exactly identical to each other either...) than the Russian or Mandarin /ʂ/. It's possible that retroflexion is falling out of fashion in Polish. The Czech ž and š are more fronted than all of these, maybe halfway to [ʑ ɕ] (Polish ź, ś); they're also less rounded than the /ʃ/ of German, English and even French. (To find a completely unrounded [ʃ] that is not fronted, you have to go all the way to Navajo; you probably won't find any in Europe.) In short, if the Romanian ș and j are like the currently usual pronunciations of Polish sz and ż / rz, [ʃ ʒ] are entirely appropriate transcriptions. David Marjanović (talk) 16:19, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

As a fellow Romanian speaker, I fully endorse the changing of ș [ ʃ ] to [ ʂ ] and j [ ʒ ] to [ ʐ ] . Both [ ʃ ] and [ ʒ ] are used in the Southern part of the country, notably Muntenia, and especially the Romanian used in the capital city. Still, those sounds are not used by the majority of Romanians like those from Transylvania and Moldova. It was striking when I compared the two pair of sounds and also did the test with 5 subjects from various parts of the country, including those born and living in Bucharest. All of them acknowledged [ ʃ ] and [ ʒ ] as being typical for the Munteninan "dialect". Shaku91 (talk) 11:01, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I also confirm most of the above, I'm a native Muntenian dialect speaker, even for me (Bucharest), [ ʃ ] and [ ʒ ] are foreign. I would describe my realizations as half-way between the [ ʃ ] - [ ʂ ] and [ ʒ ] -[ ʐ ] continuums. So, as someone mentioned prior, likely similar to modern Polish pronunciation. For examples of [ ʂ ] and [ ʐ ] (to demonstrate that they too, seem a bit off), one can watch old, communist, Romanian movies. 89.136.169.68 (talk) 13:28, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Palatal stops [c] and [ɟ] as separate phonemes

I've reverted a good-faith edits by Akhenaten01, who added two palatal stops to the consonant inventory, /c/ and /ɟ/ (here and in Romanian language). Current phonological analyses of Romanian do not consider them phonemes, but allophones of /k, g/. For this, see Ioana Chițoran's The Phonology of Romanian, page 10, that can be read on Google Books. She states that the phoneme inventory without /c, ɟ/ is "the one commonly assumed for Romanian". And I think we should stick to what is commonly assumed.

It is true though that Petrovici proposed inventories with /c, ɟ/ as separate phonemes, but then again such analyses also claim that all the other palatalized consonants are separate phonemes. Moreover, it is also true that, quite often in phonetic Romanian transcriptions, [k, g] are distinguished from [c, ɟ], but this is done without an implicit claim that they are distinct phonemes (I would say it's done for the sake of tradition more than for the sake of precision; a hint of this is that IPA is still not used in such transcriptions).

If the two were separate phonemes, one would probably be able to distinguish, for example, between /ke, ki, ge, gi/ and /ce, ci, ɟe, ɟi/. But one cannot. One argument for considering /k/ different from /c/ would be the fact that one can distinguish between [ka] and [ca] in word pairs such as car and chiar (although these can be written phonetically as [kar] and [kʲar]). The problem with this argument is that, more often than not, [ca] is actually a realization of /ke̯a/, as in cheamă, just the same way as the sequences /te̯a/, /le̯a/, etc.

Until Emanuel Vasiliu's Fonologia limbii române (1965) phoneme inventories tended to claim /c/ and /ɟ/ to be separate phonemes. Vasiliu argued (page 122 therein) for /k/ and /g/ to include [c] and [ɟ] as allophones. Now, judging from Chițoran's statement, it appears that Vasiliu's proposal has become mainstream. — AdiJapan 13:33, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I think, given the user's edit summary, they may believe that the table is designed to show allophones. If there's some variation in the treatment of the palatal stops, I wouldn't mind including them with some sort of footnote or something. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 15:13, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Some sounds are not dental

/s/, /z/, /ts/ and /r/ aren‘t dental in romanian. May someone correct this.−−YodaMaster445 (talk) 14:51, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

I confirm the above. Also, there seems to be some debate regarding various vowel realizations. Perhaps some bit of actual peer-reviewed quality research here helps: 89.136.169.68 (talk) 13:24, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

References

[h]?

Seriously? Glottal? What little Romanian I've heard consistently had a velar [x] for h, and this is carried over as an accent into English. I natively speak German which keeps [h] and [x] pretty well apart. David Marjanović (talk) 13:11, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

That'd explain /hʲ/ surfacing as [ç]. It'd be nothing more than fronting, as in Polish and Russian. Sol505000 (talk) 00:17, 11 December 2021 (UTC)