are used in the dialects of Ronse and Ghent and are spreading from the latter. The lateral is velarised postvocalically. In the dialects around Maldegem, syllable-final is omitted altogether. In the western dialects, is usually realised as an approximant . and are not native to many East Flemish dialects and usually occur from the palatalisation of and , respectively. That is especially common close to the Dender area. Similarly, may merge into in some dialects like Platgents that lack postalveolar fricatives. As in Standard Dutch, all plosives and fricatives are devoiced word-finally, but Core Flemish tends to voice plosives between a coloured vowel and . In some dialects, /k/ also has the allophone in that position. Vowels The following table gives an overview of some common phonemes in stressed syllables. Many East Flemish dialects have lost the phonemic vowel length distinction, but the distincition is made in the following table for the dialects that have kept it. Also, the central vowel /ə/ occurs only in unstressed syllables and is often heavily reduced or even omitted in many dialects. Notes: In the true East Flemish dialects, are usually diphthongised to . In the dialects of Ghent and Ronse, on the other hand, are diphthongised to . is merged into in several dialects. That included a now-extinct lower-class Ghent dialect, which had the indirect effect of current Platgents rounding to in multiple words as a counterreaction. are diphthongised to before /z/ and /v/. In some northwestern dialects, that is the common pronunciation in most positions. The same goes for , which has merged with in most dialects. After /d/ or word-finally, is pronounced [æ] in most dialects. In the dialect of Ghent, it is pronounced [æ] or even [a] in most positions except before . are merged into when they are followed by . When followed by alveolars, is diphthongised to in most dialects. In the dialect of Ronse, it is always pronounced [u]. In many dialects, /o/ and /o:/ have merged. In the dialect of Ghent, the phoneme has later split, based on its position: before velars and labials and before alveolars. One exception is the short /o/ in front of nasal consonants nasals, which has consistently become [u] in Ghent. and have become and , respectively, when followed by an /r/, but that is no longer productive on more recent borrowings or when the /r/ is followed by an alveolar.