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Glite Dictionary
🪨 Still hard 🔤 Not palatalized 🚰 Hard water
unsoftened

unsoftened

8.4
A consonant pronounced without a following 'y' sound so it sounds hard
  • adjective
  • /ʌnˈsɔfənd/
  • Specialized
translation icon : no palatalizado
  • In Russian, the consonant unsoftened 't' sounds harder than its palatalized counterpart.

Examples

  • Some languages make a clear distinction between unsoftened and palatalized sounds.

  • The sound was distinctly unsoftened in the recording.

  • The linguist explained how unsoftened consonants differ from their softened forms in pronunciation.

  • The teacher emphasized the unsoftened consonants during the lesson.

  • In Russian, the consonant unsoftened 't' sounds harder than its palatalized counterpart.

  • The linguist explained how unsoftened consonants differ from their softened forms in pronunciation.

  • Some languages make a clear distinction between unsoftened and palatalized sounds.

Antonyms

softened
3.3

Made less strong, harsh, or loud

Surface Forms

unsoftened positive

Morphology

unsoftened = softened (transparent) = un + soften + ed

The prefix 'un-' negates the adjective 'softened' in a phonetic sense, so the structure is literal and predictable.

Etymology

Unsoftened comes from un- 'not' and soften 'to make soft', and in speech 'soft' often means a sound changed by the tongue, so an unsoftened consonant is 'not softened' and therefore sounds harder.