vowel after the final consonant). Slavic languages Most Slavic languages exhibit final devoicing, but notably standard (Štokavian) Serbo-Croatian and Ukrainian do not. Belarusian Bulgarian Czech Macedonian Polish Russian Rusyn Serbo-Croatian (Kajkavian dialects) Slovak Slovene Sorbian Other Indo-European languages Albanian – certain dialects, notably the dialects of certain areas of the Berati and Korça counties Arbëresh Breton Latgalian Lithuanian Yaghnobi Non-Indo-European languages Azerbaijani (half-voiced in Iranian Azerbaijan, but unexplained in Azerbaijan proper) Georgian (for stops) Indonesian (for stops) Kalmyk (for stops) Khmer Korean (nuanced; see Korean phonology) Livonian (fully devoiced or half-voiced) Lao Malaysian (for stops) Maltese Modern Javanese (for stops) Mongolian Thai Tok Pisin Turkish (for stops, partially) Notes: Hungarian, which lies geographically between Germanic- and Slavic- speaking areas, does not have it. Examples Dutch and Afrikaans In Dutch and Afrikaans, terminal devoicing results in homophones such as 'hard' and 'heart' as well as differences in consonant sounds between the singular and plural forms of nouns, for example (Dutch) and (Afrikaans) for 'wave–waves'. The history of the devoicing phenomenon within the West Germanic languages is not entirely clear, but the discovery of a runic inscription from the early fifth century suggests that this terminal devoicing originated in Frankish. Of the old West Germanic languages, Old Dutch, a descendant of Frankish, is the earliest to show any kind of devoicing, and final devoicing also occurred in Frankish-influenced Old French. Amelands, spoken on the Wadden Sea island of Ameland, is the only Dutch dialect that does not feature final-obstruent devoicing. English Standard varieties of English do not have phonological final-obstruent devoicing of the type that neutralizes phonemic contrasts; thus pairs like bad and bat are distinct in all major accents of English. Nevertheless, voiced obstruents are devoiced to some extent in final position in English, especially when phrase-final or when followed by a voiceless consonant (for example, bad cat ). Additionally, the voiced alveolar stop /d/ is regularly devoiced in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). Old English had final devoicing of , although the spelling did not distinguish and . It can be inferred from the modern pronunciation of half with a voiceless , from an originally voiced fricative in Proto-Germanic (preserved in German and Gothic ). There was also final devoicing of to finally, evidenced by spellings like alongside . German Final-obstruents devoicing occurs in the varieties from Northern Germany. The German contrast between homorganic obstruents is more properly described as a