Re: long consonants

Henrik Theiling wrote:

>bob thornton <arcanesock@...> writes:
> > --- # 1 <salut_vous_autre@...> wrote:
> > > I'd want to ask if much languages distinguish
>long
> > > and short consonants
> >...
> > Consonant lengthening, called 'gemination' is
>found in
> > Finnish, and I think a few Semetic languages. It's
> > uncommon, but not that much so.
>
>Uncommon?  That's not what I would say.  To travel
>around the world,
>naming a few not-so-unknown langs: it exists in
>Finnish, Estonian,
>Japanese, Arabic, Greenlandic, Inuktitut, Swiss
>German, and many
>others.  (And I'm sure I forgot a few other famous
>ones.)
>
>I'd say it's quite common.
>
ok thanks for these explainations I now feel more rassured about using them
in conlangs and feeling them natural

but still a question: are long consonants... geminated consonants phonemic
in these languages?

Are geminated consonants opposed to the short ones enough to make that
pronounciating a germinated consonant as short would make the sense
different or would it remains the same?

And are they really phonemes in the sense it may be used in a root or do
they simply *occur* when you paste a word that ends with the same consonant
it is pasted to, like it is in the "penknife" example Sanghyeon Seo gave?


- Max

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