Consonant harmony
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Consonant harmony is a type of "long-distance" phonological assimilation akin to the similar assimilatory process involving vowels, i.e. vowel harmony.
[edit] Examples
There are several kinds of consonant harmony. One of the most commonly found, called sibilant harmony, requires all the sibilants of the word to belong either to the anterior class (s-like sounds) or the nonanterior class (sh-like sounds). Such patterns are found in Navajo, Kinyarwanda, and elsewhere.
Various Austronesian languages exhibit consonant harmony among the liquid consonants, with [r] assimilating at a distance to [l] or vice versa. Likewise, in Sanskrit, [n] is retroflexed to [ɳ] if certain consonants precede it in the same word, even at a distance.
Guaraní shows nasal harmony, by which certain affixes have alternative forms according to whether the root includes a nasal consonant or not.
Finnish speakers find it hard to pronounce both 'b' and 'p' in foreign words (e.g. pubi), so they voice (bubi) or devoice (pupi) the entire word.
