fortis and lenis opposition than an opposition of voiceless and voiced sounds. Therefore, the term devoicing may be misleading, since voice is only an optional feature of German lenis obstruents. By contrast, the German term for the phenomenon, Auslautverhärtung ("final-sound hardening"), refers to fortition rather than devoicing. However, the German phenomenon is similar to the final devoicing in other languages in that the opposition between two different kinds of obstruents disappears at the ends of words, and in fact at the ends of all syllables, making homophones of such pairs as ("wheel") and ("council, counsel"), both pronounced . The German varieties of the north, and many pronunciations of Standard German, involve voice in the distinction between fortis and lenis obstruents however. Final devoicing applies to all plosives and fricatives, and to loan words as well as native words. Some examples from Northern German include: Russian Final-obstruent devoicing can lead to the neutralization of phonemic contrasts in certain environments. For example, Russian ('demon', phonemically ) and ('without', phonemically ) are pronounced identically in isolation as . The presence of this process in Russian is also the source of the seemingly variant transliterations of Russian names into -off (Russian: ), especially by the French, as well as older English transcriptions. Devoicing in compounds In compounds, the behaviour varies between languages: In some languages, devoicing is lexicalized, which means that words that are devoiced in isolation retain that final devoicing when they are part of a compound. In English, for example, there is an alternation between voiced and voiceless fricatives in pairs such as the following: thief ([f]) – thieve ([v]) bath ([θ]) – bathe ([ð]) The process is not productive in English, however; see article Consonant voicing and devoicing. In other languages, it is purely phonological. which means that voicing depends solely on position and on assimilation with adjacent consonants. Example: German. Notes References Brockhaus, Wiebke. (1995). Final Devoicing in the Phonology of German. Max Niemeyer. Crowley, Terry & Bowern Claire. (2010). An Introduction to Historical Linguistics (Fourth ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. See also Consonant voicing and devoicing Lenition Surface filter External links Final Devoicing or 'Why does <naoi> sound like <naoich>?' – explanation of devoicing with regard to Scottish Gaelic Final Devoicing – extract (with illustrative audio clips) from Peter Ladefoged's A Course in Phonetics Final Devoicing – from The Talking Map | Tips for pronunciation Phonology Phonetics