Page "Consonant cluster" Paragraph 3

Many languages forbid consonant clusters altogether.

Maori and Pirahã, for instance, forbid any two consecutive consonants in a word.

Japanese is almost as strict, but allows clusters of consonant plus as in Tokyo, the name of Japan's capital city.

Across a syllable boundary, it also allows a sequence of a nasal plus another consonant, as in Honshū ( the name of the largest island ) and tempura ( a traditional dish ).

A great many languages are more restrictive than English in terms of consonant clusters ; almost every Malayo-Polynesian language forbids consonant clusters entirely.

Tahitian, Samoan and Hawaiian are all of this sort.

Standard Arabic forbids initial consonant clusters and more than two consecutive consonants in other positions.

So do most other Semitic languages, although Modern Israeli Hebrew permits initial two-consonant clusters ( e. g. pkak " cap "; dlat " pumpkin "), and Moroccan Arabic, under Berber influence, allows strings of several consonants.

Like most Mon – Khmer languages, Khmer permits only initial consonant clusters with up to three consonants in a row per syllable.

Finnish has initial consonant clusters natively only on South-Western dialects and on foreign loans, and only clusters of three inside the word are allowed.

Most spoken languages and dialects, however, are more permissive.

In Burmese, consonant clusters of only up to three consonants ( the initial and two medials — two written forms of, ) at the initial onset are allowed in writing and only two ( the initial and one medial ) are pronounced.

These clusters are restricted to certain letters.

Some Burmese dialects allow for clusters of up to four consonants ( with the addition of the medial, which can combine with the above-mentioned medials.