Editing Maithili language (section)

====Stops====
There are four series of stops- [[Bilabial stop|bilabials]], [[Coronal stop|coronals]], [[Retroflex stop|retroflex]] and [[Velar stop|velar]], along with an [[Palatal affricate|affricate]] series. All of them show the four way contrast like most of the modern [[Indo-Aryan languages]]:

* [[Tenuis consonant|tenuis]], as {{IPA|/p/}}, which is like ⟨p⟩ in English ''spin''
* [[Voice (phonetics)|voiced]], as {{IPA|/b/}}, which is like ⟨b⟩ in English ''bin''
* [[Aspirated consonant|aspirated]], as {{IPA|/pʰ/}}, which is like ⟨p⟩ in English ''pin'', and
* [[Breathy voice|murmured]] or [[aspirated voiced]], as {{IPA|/bʱ/}}.

Apart from the retroflex series, all the rest four series show full phonological contrast in all positions. The retroflex tenius {{IPA|/ʈ/}} and {{IPA|/ʈʰ/}} show full contrast in all positions. {{IPA|/ɖ/}} and {{IPA|/ɖʱ/}} show phonological contrast mainly word-initially.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Grierson |first=George Abraham |url=https://archive.org/details/introductiontoma00grierich |title=An introduction to the Maithili dialect of the Bihari language as spoken in North Bihar |publisher=Asiatic Society of Bengal |year=1909 |edition=2 |location=Calcutta}}</ref> Both are defective phonemes, occurring intervocalically and word finally only if preceded by a nasal consonant. Word finally and postvocalically, {{IPA|/ɖʱ/}} surfaces as {{IPA|[ɽʱ~rʱ]}}.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Yadav |first=Ramawatar |title=A Reference Grammar of Maithili |location=Berlin |publisher=Mouton de Gruyter. |year=1996 |chapter=Trends in Linguistics: Documentation, 11. |pages=15–27}}</ref> Non-initially, both are interchangeable with  {{IPA|[ɽ~ɾ]}} and {{IPA|[ɽʱ~rʱ]}} respectively.<ref name=":1" />