Estonian phonology

This distinction only applies fully for single consonants after stressed syllables.

A front vowel did historically occur there, but was lost, leaving the palatalization as its only trace (a form of cheshirization).

A secondary stress, which is not always predictable, falls usually on odd-numbered syllables or some suffixes, e.g. -mine (laulmine [ˈlɑuːlˌmine] ‘singing’), -line (aluseline [ˈɑluˑseˌline] ‘basic, alkaline’), -lik (ohtlikku [ˈohːtˌlikːku] ‘dangerous (part.

Words of more than three syllables can consist of combinations of monosyllabic, disyllabic and trisyllabic feet.

The length of vowels, consonants and thus syllables is "inherent" in the sense that it is tied to a particular word and is not subject to morphological alternations.

All stressed long syllables can possess a suprasegmental length feature.

For consistency, this article employs the terms "half-long" and "overlong" and uses ⟨ː⟩ and ⟨ːː⟩, respectively, to denote them.

[7] The suprasegmental length is not indicated in the standard orthography except for the plosives for which a single voiceless letter represents a half-long consonant while a double voiceless letter represents an overlong consonant.