In the Dutch language, hard and soft G () refers to a phonetic phenomenon of the pronunciation of the letters and and also a major isogloss within that language.
In southern dialects of Dutch (that is, those spoken roughly below the rivers Rhine, Meuse and Waal), the distinction between the phonemes and is usual, with both realized as cardinal velars or post-palatal , hereafter represented without the diacritics. The allophony between those two types of fricatives is termed soft G in Dutch dialectology.
In northern dialects of Dutch, the distinction (if present at all) is not consistent and is best described as a fortisâÂÂlenis contrast, rather than a contrast of voicing. In those varieties, and are no more front than cardinal velars, with usually being uvular: . , if distinct from , is typically a voiceless velar fricative . This is termed hard G in Dutch dialectology. It is also used in Afrikaans, so that the Afrikaans word 'good' has the same pronunciation as in Northern Dutch (), in addition to having the same meaning in both languages.
In Southern Dutch, the phonemes and are either cardinal velars or post-palatal . More specifically, post-palatals occur in contact with phonemic front vowels and , whereas the cardinal velars occur in contact with phonemic back vowels (including and ). The phonemes usually contrast by voicing, but can be devoiced to a lenis that differs from in a less energetic articulation. Verhoeven and Hageman have found that 70% of word-initial and 56% of intervocalic lenis fricatives (which includes and ) are realized as fully voiceless in Belgium. In Maastrichtian Limburgish, initial is often partially devoiced as well.
In many cases, still patterns as an obstruent, an allophone of in Ripuarian. The plural form 'saws' has an underlying : because it alternates with a voiceless fricative in the root 'saw', phonemically . Compare this with the alternation in 'question' - 'questions' (phonemically , ) or with the plural-singular pair - , which has underlying voiceless fricatives: , . The phoneme is a sonorant and thus cannot participate in alternations like the first two. Furthermore, Ripuarian features a different pronunciation of and after back vowels, as uvular , not dissimilar from the Northern Dutch pronunciation in the first case. The realization of as results in a phonetic merger with and is thus an example of rhotacism. The consonants surrounding the diphthong in are indistinguishable from each other: ). This is a typical feature of Ripuarian. This merger is also not phonemic as too is a sonorant and thus cannot participate in alternations such as - mentioned above.
In Northern Dutch, appears immediately before voiced consonants and sometimes also between vowels, but not in the word-initial position. In the latter case, the sound is not voiced and differs from in length ( is longer) and in that it is produced a little bit further front (mediovelar, rather than postvelar) and lacks any trilling, so that 'flags' has a somewhat lengthened, plain voiceless velar (hereafter represented with ): , whereas 'to laugh' features a shorter, post-velar fricative with a simultaneous voiceless uvular trill, transcribed with or in narrow IPA but normally written with or . In this article, is used (), even though the fricative portion is usually more front than cardinal uvulars. In Northern Dutch, the contrast between and is unstable, and is more likely to feature : . Apart from Ripuarian, the voiceless trill fricative appears in very different contexts in Southern Dutch, being an allophone of .