Modern Greek phonology

[1][4] In rapid and casual speech, prenasalisation is generally rarer, and voiced stops may be lenited to fricatives.

[8] Greek has palatals [c, ɟ, ç, ʝ] which are allophones of the velar consonants /k, ɡ, x, ɣ/ before the front vowels /e, i/.

[9] [ʎ] and [ɲ] occur as allophones of /l/ and /n/, respectively, in CJV (consonant–glide–vowel) clusters, in analyses that posit an archiphoneme-like glide /J/ that contrasts with the vowel /i/.

[12] Arvaniti (2007) is reluctant to treat these as phonemes on the grounds of inconclusive research into their phonological behaviour.

[13] The table below, adapted from Arvaniti (2007, p. 25), displays a near-full array of consonant phones in Standard Modern Greek.

In particular, this goes for a number of grammatical words ending in /n/, most notably the negation particles δεν and μην and the accusative forms of the personal pronoun and definite article τον and την.

This results in pronunciations such as τον πατέρα [to(m)baˈtera] ('the father' ACC) or δεν πειράζει [ðe(m)biˈrazi] ('it doesn't matter'), instead of *[ton paˈtera] and *[ðen piˈrazi].

[14] This may be compared with pervasive sandhi phenomena in Celtic languages, particularly nasalisation in Irish and in certain dialects of Scottish Gaelic.

[20] This sample text, the first sentence of Aesop's fable "The North Wind and the Sun" in Greek, and the accompanying transcription, are adapted from Arvaniti (1999, pp. 5–6).

[o voˈɾʝas ˈco̯iʎoz ˈmalonan | ʝa to ˈpços aptuz ˈðʝo ˈineo̯ ðinaˈtoteɾos | ˈota ˈnetiçe napeˈɾasi apo broˈstatus | ˈenas taksiˈðʝotis pu̥ foˈɾuse ˈkapa]