nasal plus stop sequences become voiced taps after two vowels when the second vowel is unstressed. This can vary among speakers, where the rule does not apply to certain words or when speaking at a slower pace. All alveolar consonants assimilate to dentals when occurring before a dental. Take the words "eighth, tenth, wealth". This also applies across word boundaries, for example "at this" . Alveolar stops are reduced or omitted when between two consonants. Some examples include "most people" (can be written either as or with the IPA, where the is inaudible, and "sand paper, grand master", where the is inaudible. A consonant is shortened when it is before an identical consonant, such as in "big game" or "top post". A homorganic voiceless stop may be inserted after a nasal before a voiceless fricative followed by an unstressed vowel in the same word. For example, a bilabial voiceless plosive can be detected in the word "something" even though it is orthographically not indicated. This is known as epenthesis. However, the following vowel must be unstressed. Velar stops become more front when the following vowel sound in the same syllable becomes more front. Compare for instance "cap" vs. "key" and "gap" vs. "geese" . The lateral is velarized at the end of a word when it comes after a vowel as well as before a consonant. Compare for example "life" vs. "file" or "feeling" vs. "feel" . Other languages There are many examples for allophones in languages other than English. Typically, languages with a small phoneme inventory allow for quite a lot of allophonic variation: examples are Hawaiian and Pirahã. Here are some examples (the links of language names go to the specific article or subsection on the phenomenon): Consonant allophones Final devoicing, particularly final-obstruent devoicing: Arapaho, English, Nahuatl, Catalan and many others Voicing of initial consonant Anticipatory assimilation Aspiration changes: Algonquin Frication between vowels: Dahalo Lenition: Manx, Corsican Voicing of clicks: Dahalo Allophones for : Arapaho, Xavante Allophones for : Xavante Allophones for : Bengali Allophones for : Xavante Allophones for : Manam Allophones for : Garhwali and as allophones: a number of Arabic dialects and as allophones: Some dialects of Hawaiian, and some of Mandarin (e.g. Southwestern and Lower Yangtze) Allophones for : Finnish, Spanish and many more. wide range of variation in Japanese (as archiphoneme /N/) Allophones for : Xavante Allophones for : Bengali Allophones for :