Weert dialect

Phonology

Consonants

• are bilabial, whereas are labiodental.
• are realized as postalveolar when they occur before.
• are marginal phonemes.
• * In the syllable onset, can occur only in proper names and loanwords.
• * occurs only intervocalically.
• are velar, whereas is palatal.
• * occurs only intervocalically. Younger speakers tend to merge it with.
• * Word-initial is restricted to loanwords.
• * are realized as pre-velar when they are preceded or followed by a front vowel.
• is a voiced fricative trill, either uvular or pre-uvular. The fricative component is particularly audible in the syllable coda, where a partial devoicing to also occurs.

  Vowels

• Most of the non-central vowels are more or less centralized, but only is phonetically central. The most strongly centralized vowel is, whereas the least strongly centralized vowels are.
• Among back vowels, are rounded, whereas are unrounded.
• * is used only by older speakers.
• Phonetically, the tense close-mid monophthongs are centering diphthongs, and that is the reason for which they are illustrated on diphthong charts below.
• * The first elements of are centralized, but are not central enough to be labelled as central.
• * The second elements of and especially are less central than it is the case with other centering diphthongs, of which the second element is more like.
• * Before nasal consonants, are monophthongized to.
• The and contrasts seem to have begun to collapse.
• is similar to the schwa ; besides rounding, practically the only difference between those is that is somewhat more front and slightly higher than. Phonetically, it can be described as close-mid central rounded.
• is mid. It occurs only in unstressed syllables.
• The open-mid front vowels are somewhat higher than open-mid, but the back open-mid vowels are actually open-mid.
• * is realized as much more open when it occurs before.
• are best described as somewhat lowered open-mid.
• The rural variety monophthongizes to.
• The first elements of are somewhat centralized, but are not central enough to be labelled as central. Among these, the first element of is the most strongly centralized.
• The second elements of are mid-centralized.