SPELLING: GEMINATION

1. Gemination (also known as elongation) refers to the process by which a consonant is pronounced doubled. The Romance language possessing the largest amount of geminated consonants is undoubtedly Italian, with thousands of examples: passo, collana, immediato, anno, sotto, etc., where all the double consonants are pronounced separately.

2. Catalan possesses a set of geminated consonants that, in some cases, are just to be found in this language and not in its neighbouring ones. There are not so many as in Italian, but some of them are of its own. Instead, it lacks certain types of gemination,

3. Gemination can be graphically represented in several ways, mostly with the same consonant spelled twice:

innovació	innovation
gemma	gem
addició	addiction

4. There are some double consonants that never represent a geminated consonant (digrahs):

PHONEME	REPRESENTATION	CATALAN EXAMPLE	ENGLISH TRANSL.
/λ/	<ll>	llum coll treballar	light hill to work
/s/	<ss> (only intervocalic)	passar mossos	to pass youngster
/r/	<rr> (only intervocalic)	carrer sorra	street sand

5. However, there are some other formulae depending on the consonant itself. The following picture offers those cases not represented by means of a mere duplication of the consonant:

PHONEME	REPRESENTATION	CATALAN EXAMPLE	ENGLISH TRANSL.
/l:/	<l·l>	col·legi	school
	<tl>	ametla (Balearic and Valencian)	almond
/λ:/	<tll>	ametlla ratlla	almond line
/m:/	<tm>	setmana	week
/b:l/	<bl>	possible obligatori	possible mandatory
/g:l/	<gl>	segle	century

If you compare gemma and setmana, you will come across two different ways to spell the same double consonant: /m:/.

PHONEMES: VOVELS

1. Catalan vowel system is different depending on its being stressed or unstressed. The first one is much larger than the second one. The whole vowel system is as follows:

/i/						/u/
	/e/				/o/
			/ə/
		/ɛ/		/ɔ/
			/a/

2. Catalan possesses seven stressed vowels, represented as follows:

/i/						/u/
	/e/				/o/
		/ɛ/		/ɔ/
			/a/

It is important to point out that open and closes vowels play an important role, since two words may often distinguished thanks to the openness or the closeness of the vowel. Observe the following examples (the first word of the pair has an open vowel, the second one is closed):

pèl	hair
pel	for/by the (contraction)

deu	ten; [(s)he] must
déu	god

dona	lady
dóna	[(s)he] gives

3. The unstressed system of Catalan (the system of East Catalonia) is quite reduced:

/i/						/u/
			/ə/

Some geolects offer different systems. Valencian, for example, maintains five vowels and Balearic four.

The reduction process of the stressed vowels into unstressed ones (known as neutralisation) can be represented as follows:

STRESSED	UNSTRESSED
/a/	> /ə/
/ɛ/
/e/
/i/	> /i/
/ɔ/	> /u/
/o/
/u/