utterance. Among the letters representing the most conspicuous phonological variations, between Romance languages or with respect to Latin, are the following: B, V: Merged in Spanish and some dialects of Catalan, where both letters represent a single phoneme pronounced as either or depending on position, with no differentiation between B and V. C: Generally a "hard" , but "soft" (fricative or affricate) before e, i, or y. G: Generally a "hard" , but "soft" (fricative or affricate) before e, i, or y. In some languages, like Spanish, the hard g, phonemically , is pronounced as a fricative after vowels. In Romansch, the soft g is a voiced palatal plosive or a voiced alveolo-palatal affricate . H: Silent in most languages; used to form various digraphs. But represents in Romanian, Walloon and Gascon Occitan. J: Represents the fricative in most languages, or the palatal approximant in Romansh and in several of the languages of Italy, and [x] or [h] in Spanish, depending on the variety. Italian does not use this letter in native words. Q: As in Latin, its phonetic value is that of a hard c, i.e. , and in native words it is almost always followed by a (sometimes silent) u. Romanian does not use this letter in native words. S: Generally voiceless , but voiced between vowels in some languages. In Spanish, Romanian, Galician and several varieties of Italian, however, it is always pronounced voiceless between vowels. If the phoneme /s/ is represented by the letter S, predictable assimilations are normally not shown (e.g. Italian 'sled', spelled slitta but pronounced , never with ). Also at the end of syllables it may represent special allophonic pronunciations. In Romansh, it also stands for a voiceless or voiced fricative, or , before certain consonants. W: No Romance language uses this letter in native words, with the exception of Walloon. X: Its pronunciation is rather variable, both between and within languages. In the Middle Ages, the languages of Iberia used this letter to denote the voiceless postalveolar fricative , which is still the case in modern Catalan and Portuguese. With the Renaissance the classical pronunciation – or similar consonant clusters, such as , , or – were frequently reintroduced in latinisms and hellenisms. In Venetian it represents , and in Ligurian the voiced postalveolar fricative . Italian does not use this letter in native words. Y: This letter is not used