Such sounds are often referred to informally as lenis or half-voiced.

These pairs are usually called fortis and lenis.

Voiceless plain or lenis: which are tenuis, and often lightly voiced.

In the first, a sequence of two identical lenis fricatives is reduced to a single consonant.

As in other dialects, the difference between fortis and lenis is in length.

The alphabet does not distinguish the ejective, fortis, and lenis series of obstruents.

He replaced Lenis Landaeta shortly after the elections.

The voicing of lenis consonants varied between dialects.

Therefore, the term devoicing may be misleading, since voice is only an optional feature of German lenis obstruents.

Classical Greek additionally uses the lenis mark (') and asper mark (,).

German linguists call the distinction fortis and lenis rather than tense and lax.

Spiritus lenis would not happen if the second word began with a glottal stop (or any form of stop consonant).

The lenis consonants are often voiced, especially between vowels, although they often tend to be voiceless at the end of words.

Basel German also has more lenis sounds in word-initial position-for example, Dag (day).

It has not Spiritus asper, Spiritus lenis and accents.

The lenis consonants are:

In some words, the reduplicated consonant shifts from their lenis value to their fortis value.

In the plosive and fricative series, where there are two consonants in a cell, the first is fortis the second lenis.

It is more accurate to say that the opposition between fortis and lenis is neutralized in the syllable coda.

It has no breathings (spiritus asper, spiritus lenis) nor accents.

The lenis consonants are subject to other phonological processes when adjacent to fortis consonants.

The letters are large, round and narrow, without spiritus asper, spiritus lenis, or accents.

Since voice is not involved, this is explained as a contrast in tenseness, called a fortis and lenis contrast.

However, this is difficult to measure, and there is usually debate over the actual mechanism of alleged fortis or lenis consonants.

They are (like other lenis or short consonants) always preceded by long vowels, with the possible exception of unstressed vowels.