The phonology of the Hungarian language is notable for its process of vowel harmony, the frequent occurrence of geminate consonants and the presence of otherwise uncommon palatal stops. Consonants This is the standard Hungarian consonantal system, using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). {| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;" |+ Consonant phonemes of Hungarian ! ! colspan="2" | Labial ! colspan="2" | Dental ! colspan="2" | Post-alveolar ! colspan="2" | Palatal ! colspan="2" | Velar ! colspan="2" | Glottal |- ! Nasal | style="border-right:0;" | || style="border-left:0;" | | style="border-right:0;" | || style="border-left:0;" | | colspan="2" | | style="border-right:0;" | || style="border-left:0;" | | style="border-right:0;" | || style="border-left:0;" | | colspan="2" | |- ! Plosive | style="border-right:0;" width="25px" | || style="border-left:0;" width="25px" | | style="border-right:0;" width="25px" | || style="border-left:0;" width="25px" | | colspan="2" | | rowspan="2" style="border-right:0;border-top:0;" | || rowspan="2" style="border-left:0;border-top:0;" | | style="border-right:0;" width="25px" | || style="border-left:0;" width="25px" | | colspan="2" | |- ! Affricate | colspan="2" | | style="border-right:0;" | || style="border-left:0;" | | style="border-right:0;" width="25px" | || style="border-left:0;" width="25px" | | colspan="2" | | colspan="2" | |- ! Fricative | style="border-right:0;" | || style="border-left:0;" | | style="border-right:0;" | || style="border-left:0;" | | style="border-right:0;" | || style="border-left:0;" | | colspan="2" | | colspan="2" | | style="border-right:0;" width="25px" | || style="border-left:0;" width="25px" | |- ! Trill | colspan="2" | | style="border-right:0;" | || style="border-left:0;" | | colspan="2" | | colspan="2" | | colspan="2" | | colspan="2" | |- ! Approximant | colspan="2" | | style="border-right:0;" | || style="border-left:0;" | | colspan="2" | | style="border-right:0;" | || style="border-left:0;" | | colspan="2" | | colspan="2" | |} It is debated whether the palatal consonant pair consists of stops or affricates. They are considered affricates or stops, depending on register, by Tamás Szende, head of the department of General Linguistics at PPKE, and stops by Mária Gósy, research professor, head of the Department of Phonetics at ELTE. The reason for the different analyses is that the relative duration of the friction of (as compared to the duration of its closure) is longer than those of the stops, but shorter than those of the affricates. has the stop-like nature of having a full duration no longer than those of other (voiceless) stops such as but, considering the average closure time in relation to the friction time of the consonants, its duration structure is somewhat closer to those of the affricates. Almost every consonant may be