This work examines the timing of geminates in Bernese (a Swiss-German dialect), Hungarian, Levantine, Arabic, and Madurese (an Austronesian language of Indonesia). These languages differ as to whether vowel length is underlyingly contrastive, whether long vowels may precede germinates, and whether non-medial geminates are allowed. Two questions of primary interest are in what ways these phonological differences influence phonetic duration, and how germinates are integrated into the overall timing strategies of the languages. Based on acoustic studies of the four languages, the author argues...