# Are there languages without vowel reduction? Tags: phonology, phonetics, vowels - Score: 9 - Views: 2052 - Answers: 4 - Answered: yes - Asked by: James Grossmann (8898 rep) - Asked: 2012-08-21 - Edited: 2012-08-22 - Site: linguistics ## Question Are there languages without vowel reduction? That is, are there languages in which the vowels in certain syllables are not centralized and/or "de-rounded" and/or shortened because of speaking rate, stress patterns, etc.? I've heard that Hungarian is such a language. If so, why does it lack vowel reduction? ## Answers ### Answer by Michael Billips (score: 7 [ACCEPTED]) If you mean 'a vowel phoneme moving to another vowel sound in the unstressed position in a syllable-timed language', then yes. Spanish and its ancestor Latin do not have vowel reduction. If you expand your definition of vowel reduction to include derounding, shortening, devoicing, elision, ATR movement, monophthongization, and so on, then languages like Japanese would have vowel reduction. Fast speech does not count for vowel reduction—everything "reduces" when people speak quickly, but that's not a property of the phonological system. Vowel reduction must be phone