Talk:Latvian phonology

H

Absence of the phoneme h in Latvian could be mentioned/described somewhere. It is an interesting feature and not so obvious for a reader.--Võrok (talk) 11:36, 28 November 2012 (UTC) It could be mentioned also in the main article about Latvian language.--Võrok (talk) 11:38, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Assimilation: dependence on the syllable(s) to which subsequent consonants belong?

The current article text contains:

"Voiced and unvoiced consonants assimilate to the subsequent consonant, e.g. apgabals [ˈabɡabals] or labs [ˈlaps]. At the same time single voiced consonants (d, z, g, dz etc.) are not devoiced word-finally: dzied [ˈdzie̯d], dedz [dæd͡z]."

It would follow from this that "t" in "atnāk" would be pronounced "d", and I wonder whether this is true.

Furthermore, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atbild%C4%93t#Latvian shows [atbîldɛː̂t] for "atbildet"; https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atmi%C5%86a#Latvian shows [atmiɲa] for "atmina", and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atvasara#Latvian gives [atvasaɾa] for "atvasara".

If these indications are correct, that would contradict the rule as given in the article. (And there are more such counterexamples on en.wiktionary.org.

Could the answer to the question whether subsequent consonants belong to the same syllable be a determining factor?Redav (talk) 16:57, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

The voicing assimilation occurs only before obstruents, including heterosyllabic obstruents, but never before sonorants. Sonorants include not only the nasals [m, n], but also <v> [ʋ]. [tb] for <tb> is an error, it must be [db]. 2A02:3032:202:355C:9BB6:92E1:A9E6:861E (talk) 03:57, 15 November 2023 (UTC)