West Germanic gemination
Ok kiddo, so you know how sometimes when we say a word, we say a letter or sound twice? Like when we say "big" we say the "g" sound twice, right? Well in some languages, including West Germanic languages like Dutch and German, they have something called gemination.
Gemination means that when they say certain sounds, they hold them for a bit longer than normal, so it sounds like they're saying the sound twice. It's kinda like if you hold a note when you're singing, but with a letter in a word.
Sometimes this happens naturally in the language, like in Dutch where the letter "t" is often held longer when it's in the middle of a word. But in some cases, gemination is actually part of the grammar rules of the language.
For example, in German, when certain consonants like "s", "t", and "p" appear after a short vowel, they're supposed to be held for twice as long. So instead of just saying "top" like we do in English, a German speaker would say "toop".
Gemination might sound a bit strange to us, but it's an important part of how some languages sound and work.
Gemination means that when they say certain sounds, they hold them for a bit longer than normal, so it sounds like they're saying the sound twice. It's kinda like if you hold a note when you're singing, but with a letter in a word.
Sometimes this happens naturally in the language, like in Dutch where the letter "t" is often held longer when it's in the middle of a word. But in some cases, gemination is actually part of the grammar rules of the language.
For example, in German, when certain consonants like "s", "t", and "p" appear after a short vowel, they're supposed to be held for twice as long. So instead of just saying "top" like we do in English, a German speaker would say "toop".
Gemination might sound a bit strange to us, but it's an important part of how some languages sound and work.