Dutch languageDutch (Nederlands ˈneːdərlɑnts), also known as Netherlandic or Netherlandish, is a West Germanic language spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after its close relatives German and English. Afrikaans is a separate but somewhat mutually intelligible daughter language spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, evolving from the Cape Dutch dialects of Southern Africa.
Index of phonetics articlesAcoustic phonetics Active articulator Affricate Airstream mechanism Alexander John Ellis Alexander Melville Bell Alfred C. Gimson Allophone Alveolar approximant (ɹ) Alveolar click (ǃ) Alveolar consonant Alveolar ejective affricate (tsʼ) Alveolar ejective (tʼ) Alveolar ejective fricative (sʼ) Alveolar flap (ɾ) Alveolar lateral approximant (l, l̥) Alveolar lateral ejective affricate (tɬʼ) Alveolar lateral ejective fricative (ɬʼ) Alveolar lateral flap (ɺ) Alveolar nasal (n) Alveolar ridge Alveolar trill (r, r̥) Alveolo-palatal consonant Alveolo-palatal ejective fricative (ɕʼ) Apical consonant Approximant consonant Articulatory phonetics Aspirated consonant (◌h) Auditory phonetics Back vowel Basis of articulation Bernd J.
VowelA vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length). They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress. The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "vocal" (i.e. relating to the voice).
SonorantIn phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are sonorants, as are semivowels like [j] and [w], nasal consonants like [m] and [n], and liquid consonants like [l] and [r]. This set of sounds contrasts with the obstruents (stops, affricates and fricatives).
Digraph (orthography)A digraph or digram (from the δίς , "double" and γράφω , "to write") is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme (distinct sound), or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined. Some digraphs represent phonemes that cannot be represented with a single character in the writing system of a language, like the English sh in ship and fish. Other digraphs represent phonemes that can also be represented by single characters.
YiddishYiddish (ייִדיש, יידיש or אידיש, yidish or idish, ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ, Jewish; ייִדיש-טײַטש, Yidish-Taytsh, Judeo-German) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originates from 9th century Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic) and to some extent Aramaic. Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages.
Uvular consonantUvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead. Uvular affricates can certainly be made but are rare: they occur in some southern High-German dialects, as well as in a few African and Native American languages.
West Germanic languagesThe West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages). The West Germanic branch is classically subdivided into three branches: Ingvaeonic, which includes English and Frisian, Istvaeonic, which encompasses Dutch and its close relatives, and Irminonic, which includes German and its close relatives and variants. English is by far the most-spoken West Germanic language, with more than 1 billion speakers worldwide.
PhonotacticsPhonotactics (from Ancient Greek phōnḗ "voice, sound" and taktikós "having to do with arranging") is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable structure, consonant clusters and vowel sequences by means of phonotactic constraints. Phonotactic constraints are highly language-specific. For example, in Japanese, consonant clusters like /st/ do not occur.
Vietnamese languageVietnamese (Tiếng Việt) is an Austroasiatic language from Vietnam where it is the national and official language. Vietnamese is spoken natively by around 85 million people, several times as many as the rest of the Austroasiatic family combined. It is the native language of the Vietnamese (Kinh) people, as well as a second language or first language for other ethnic groups in Vietnam. Like many other languages in Southeast Asia and East Asia, Vietnamese is an analytic language with phonemic tone.
