→ nigorizake ("muddy" + "rice wine" → "unfiltered sake") Uralic languages Word-medial consonant mutation is found in several Uralic languages and has the traditional name of consonant gradation. It is pervasive, especially in the Samic and Finnic branches. Finnish Consonant gradation involves an alternation in consonants between a strong grade in some forms of a word and a weak grade in others. The consonants subject to graduation are the plosives (p, t, k) that are followed by a vowel and preceded by a vowel, a sonorant (m, n, l, r), or h. The strong grade usually appears in a open syllable or before a long vowel. The gradation of loanwords may include gradation of the plosives that are not native to Finnish: Burmese Burmese exhibits consonant mutation, involving voicing in many compound words. The primary type of consonant mutation is that if two syllables are joined to form a compound word, the initial consonant of the second syllable becomes voiced. The shift occurs in these phones: → → → → → → Examples: () + () > ("medicine" + "room" → "clinic") The second type of consonant mutation occurs when the phoneme after the nasalized final becomes a sound in compound words. Examples: "blouse" ( angkyi) can be pronounced or . The third type of consonant mutation occurs when phonemes , after the nasalized final , become in compound words: () + () > () ("to consult") () + () > ("to apologize") () + () > ("airplane") Southern Oceanic languages Mutation of the initial consonant of verbs is a feature of several languages in the Southern Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family. Central Vanuatu Initial consonant mutation occurs in many Central Vanuatu languages like Raga: nan vano "I went" nam bano "I go" Those patterns of mutations probably arose when a nasal prefix, indicating the realis mood, became combined with the verb's initial consonant. The possible ancestral pattern of mutation and its descendants in some modern Central Vanuatu languages are shown below: New Caledonia Initial consonant mutation also serves a grammatical purpose in some New Caledonian languages. For example, Iaai uses initial consonant mutation in verbs to distinguish between specific/definite objects and generic/indefinite objects: Those forms likely derive from an earlier reduplication of the first syllable in which the interconsonantal vowel was deleted, resulting in a spirantization of the formerly reduplicated consonant. Dholuo The Dholuo language (one of