Marathi Language - Sounds

Sounds

The phoneme inventory of Marathi is similar to that of many other Indo-Aryan languages, especially that of the Konkani language. An IPA chart of all contrastive sounds in Marathi is provided below.

Consonants
Labial Dental Alveolar Retroflex Alveopalatal Velar Glottal
Voiceless
stops		 p
pʰ		 t̪
t̪ʰ		 ts
 ʈ
ʈʰ		 tʃ
tʃʰ		 k
kʰ
Voiced
stops		 b
bʱ		 d̪
d̪ʱ		 dz
dzʱ		 ɖ
ɖʱ		 dʒ
dʒʱ		 ɡ
ɡʱ
Voiceless
fricatives		 s ʃ h
Nasals m
mʱ		 n̪
n̪ʱ		 ɳ
Liquids ʋ
ʋʱ		 l ɾ
lʱ ɾʱ		 ɭ j

Older aspirated *tsʰ, dzʱ have lost their onset, with *tsʰ merging with /s/ and *dzʱ being typically realized as an aspirated fricative, . This /ts, dz, zʱ/ series is not distinguished in writing from /tʃ, tʃʰ, dʒ, dʒʱ/.

Vowels
Front Central Back
High i u
Mid e ə o
Low a

There are two more vowels in Marathi to denote the pronunciations of English words such as of a in act and a in all. These are written as अॅ and ऑ. The IPA signs for these are and, respectively. Marathi retains the original Sanskrit pronunciations of certain alphabets such as the anusvāra (for instance, saṃhar, compared to sanhar in Hindi). Moreover, Marathi preserves certain Sanskrit patterns of pronunciation, as in the words purṇa and rāma compared to purṇ and rām in Hindi.

Read more about this topic:  Marathi Language

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