voicing for many consonants. Some analyses of Northern Sámi phonology may include preaspirated stops and affricates (, , , , ) and pre-stopped or pre-glottalised nasals (voiceless , , , and voiced , , , ). However, these can be treated as clusters for the purpose of phonology, since they are clearly composed of two segments and only the first of these lengthens in quantity 3. The terms "preaspirated" and "pre-stopped" will be used in this article to describe these combinations for convenience. Notes: Voiceless stops have voiced or partly voiced allophones when they occur adjacent to voiced sounds, and sometimes also word-initially. Stops before a homorganic nasal are realised as unreleased stops. Some, particularly younger, speakers instead realise voiceless stops as a glottal stop in this position, and decompose voiced stops into a homorganic nasal + glottal stop combination (, etc.). is realised as a labiodental fricative in the syllable onset (before a vowel), and as bilabial or in the syllable coda (in a consonant cluster). Although is a fricative, it behaves phonologically like an approximant, in particular like . Quantity 3 geminated plain stops and affricates (written bb, dd, zz, žž, ddj, gg) are variously described as voiced (, , , , , ) or partly voiced (, , , , , ). Voiceless sonorants are very rare, but occur more frequently as allophonic realisations. A combination of sonorant followed by in the coda (, , , , , , ), is realised as the equivalent voiceless sonorant (with becoming ). Voiceless only occurs this way, and is quite rare. A combination of followed by a stop or affricate in the onset (, etc.) is realised as preaspiration (, ). is extremely rare. Dialectal variation Not all Northern Sámi dialects have identical consonant inventories. Some consonants are absent from some dialects, while others are distributed differently. Western Finnmark lacks , using in its place. This also applies to sequences of pre-stopped and , which become and respectively. is retained before a velar consonant, but as an allophone of . Eastern Finnmark does not have voiced pre-stopped nasals, replacing them with voiceless equivalents. Sea Sámi does not have pre-stopped nasals at all, having geminate nasals in their place. The postaspirated stops do not occur in Western Finnmark dialects, plain stops are used instead. They occur only in recent loanwords from the Scandinavian languages, and only before a stressed syllable