Greenlandic phonology

For example: Nonetheless, still there are some minimal pairs of the lowering allophony, in the case of ⟨rC⟩: aallaat "gun" [aaɬɬaat] vs. aarlaat "February" [ɑɑɬɬaat].

Greenlandic has consonants at five points of articulation: labial, alveolar, palatal, velar and uvular.

It distinguishes stops, fricatives, and nasals at the labial, alveolar, velar, and uvular points of articulation.

The alveolar stop /t/ is pronounced as an affricate [t͡s] before the high front vowel /i/.

Often, Danish loanwords containing ⟨b d g⟩ preserve these in writing, but that does not imply a change in pronunciation, for example ⟨baaja⟩ [paːja] 'beer' and ⟨Guuti⟩ [kuːtˢi] 'God'; these are pronounced exactly as /p t k/.

Consonant clusters occur only over syllable boundaries, and their pronunciation is subject to regressive assimilations that convert them into geminates.

[19] These assimilations mean that one of the most recognizable Inuktitut words, iglu ("house"), is illu in Greenlandic, where the /ɡl/ consonant cluster of Inuktitut is assimilated into a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative.

The fourth vowel was still present in Old Greenlandic, as attested by Hans Egede.

[20] In modern West Greenlandic, the difference between the two original vowels can be discerned morphophonologically only in certain environments.

[21] The degree to which the assimilation of consonant clusters has taken place is an important dialectal feature separating Polar Eskimo, Inuktun, which still allows some ungeminated consonant clusters, from West and East Greenlandic.

East Greenlandic (Tunumiit oraasiat) has shifted some geminate consonants, such as [ɬː] to [tː].