Romanian Phonology - Consonants

Consonants

Standard Romanian has twenty consonants, as listed in the table below.

Besides the consonants in this table, a few consonants can have allophones:

• Palatalized consonants occur when preceding /i/.
• /n/ becomes the velar before /k/, /ɡ/ and /h/;
• /h/ becomes the velar in word-final positions (duh 'spirit') and before consonants (hrean 'horseradish'); it becomes the palatal before, like in the word "human" in English, and as a realization for an underlying /hi/ sequence in word-final positions (cehi 'Czech people' is pronounced, though usually transcribed ).

The Romanian consonant set is almost the same as that in Italian, with a few exceptions: The Italian palatal consonants /ɲ/, /ʎ/ and affricate /dz/ are missing in standard Romanian, which in turn has the fricative /ʒ/ and the "glottal" /h/.

Here are some examples, with an approximate indication of how each consonant is pronounced, intended for English native speakers.