Germanic languages, such as RP English, Standard German, and Dutch, tense vowels are longer in duration than lax vowels, but in Scots, Scottish English, and Icelandic, there is no such correlation. The standard variety of Yiddish has only lax vowels, and no tense vowels. Germanic languages have lax vowels generally only in closed syllables and so they are also called checked vowels. The tense vowels are called free vowels, as they often occur at the end of a syllable. Consonants Occasionally, tenseness has been used to distinguish pairs of contrasting consonants in languages. Korean, for example, has a three-way contrast among stops and affricates; the three series are often transcribed as - - . The contrast between the series and the series is sometimes said to be a function of tenseness: the former are lax and the latter tense. In this case the definition of "tense" would have to include greater glottal tension; see Korean phonology. In Ewe, and are articulated with a strong articulation, and , to better distinguish them from weaker and . In some dialects of Irish and Scottish Gaelic, there is a contrast between and . Again, the former set have sometimes been described as lax and the latter set as tense. It is not clear what phonetic characteristics other than greater duration would then be associated with tenseness. Some researchers have argued that the contrast in German, traditionally described as voice ( vs. ), is in fact better analyzed as tenseness since the latter set is voiceless in Southern German. German linguists call the distinction fortis and lenis rather than tense and lax. Tenseness is especially used to explain stop consonants of the Alemannic German dialects because they have two series of them that are identically voiceless and unaspirated. However, it is debated whether the distinction is really a result of different muscular tension and not of gemination. See also Checked and free vowels Vowel reduction Fortis and lenis Trisyllabic laxing References Phonetics Phonology