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The Romanian language has a phoneme inventory of seven vowels, two or four semivowels (disputed), and twenty consonants. Other phonemes are found in interjections or recent borrowings. Romanian includes the two unusual diphthongs /e̯a/ and /o̯a/ and the central vowel /ɨ/.
The UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database (or UPSID) is a statistical survey of the phoneme inventories in 451 of the world's languages.The database was created by American phonetician Ian Maddieson for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1984 and has been updated several times.
Estimates of phoneme-inventory size can differ radically between sources, occasionally by a factor of several hundred percent. For instance, Received Pronunciation of English has been claimed to have anywhere between 11 and 27 vowels, whereas West ǃXoon has been analyzed as having anywhere from 87 to 164 consonants.
Phonetic change can occur without any modification to the phoneme inventory or phonemic correspondences. This change is purely allophonic or subphonemic. This can entail one of two changes: either the phoneme turns into a new allophone—meaning the phonetic form changes—or the distribution of allophones of the phoneme changes. [2]
On account of the above, the vowel inventory changes from /iː i eː e a aː o oː u uː/ to /i ɪ e ɛ a ɔ o ʊ u/, with pre-existing differences in vowel quality achieving phonemic status and with no distinction between original /a/ and /aː/. Additionally: Unstressed /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ merge into /e/ and /o/ respectively. [32]
In the following table, the most common variants of the graphemes are shown. The phonemes used in the table are somewhat arbitrary and are not specifically based on any one dialect (for example, the phoneme denoted /d͡ʒ/ in the table can be realised as /ʒ/, /ʐ/ or /ɟ/, depending on dialect):
In today's Romanian language this letter is no longer present and Latin letter z is used in its stead. In addition, the acute accent (á, í) was used in verb infinitives and 3rd-person imperfect forms stressed on the last syllable: lăudá ("to praise"), aud̦í ("to hear"), 3rd-person imperfect lăudá, aud̦iá.
The phonemic inventory of most Romance languages is of moderate size with few unusual phonemes. Phonemic vowel length is uncommon. Some languages have developed nasal vowels or front rounded vowels. Word accent is of the stress (dynamic) type, rather than making use of pitch (as in Ancient Greek and some modern Slavic languages). Stress most ...