Final devoicing

Final devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as German, Dutch, and Russian, among others. In these languages, voiced obstruents in the syllable coda or at the end of a word become voiceless. Some examples from German include:

• Laub 'foliage', pronounced [laup]
• Rad 'wheel', pronounced [ʁaːt]
• Zug 'train', pronounced [tsuːk]

Phonological final devoicing can lead to the neutralization of phonemic constrasts in certain environments. For example, Russian нож 'a knife' (phonemically /noʒ/) and нош 'of burdens' (phonemically /noʃ/) are pronounced identically as [noʃ].

English does not have phonological final devoicing of the type that neutralizes phonemic contrasts; thus pairs like bad and bat are distinct in all major accents of English. Nevertheless voiced obstruents are devoiced to some extent in final position in English, especially when phrase-final or when followed by a voiceless consonant (for example, bad cat [bæd̥ kʰæt]). The most salient distinction between bad and bat is not the voicing of the final consonant but rather the duration of the vowel and the glottalization of final /t/: bad is pronounced [bæːd̥] while bat is [bætˀ].

External links

• Final Devoicing or 'Why does <naoi> sound like <naoich>?' — explanation of devoicing with regard to Gaelic
• Final Devoicing — extract (with illustrative audio clips) from Peter Ladefoged's A Course in Phonetics
• Final Devoicing — from The Talking Map | Tips for pronunciation