Dhivehi phonology

Dhivehi phonology

Dhivehi phonology is the study of the inventory and patterns of the consonants, vowels, and prosody of the Dhivehi language.

Consonants and vowels

The phonemic inventory of Dhivehi consists of 29 consonants and 10 vowels. Like other modern Indo-Aryan languages the Dhivehi phonemic inventory shows an opposition of long and short vowels, of dental and retroflex consonants as well as single and geminate consonants.

Vowels
Front Central Back
short long short long short long
Close i u
Mid e o
Open a
Consonants
Labial Dental Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive voiceless t ʈ c k
voiced b d ɖ ɟ ɡ
prenasalized ᵐb ⁿd ᶯɖ ᵑɡ
Fricative voiceless f s ʂ ɕ h
voiced v z
Nasal m n ɳ ɲ ŋ
Approximant l ɭ j
Trill r

Dental and retroflex stops are contrastive in Dhivehi. For example: maḍun means ‘quietly’ madun means ‘seldom’. The segments /t/ and /d/ are articulated just behind the front teeth. Dhivehi retroflex segments /ʈ/, /ɖ/, /ʂ/, and /ɭ/ are produced at the very rear part of the alveolar ridge.

Dhivehi has the prenasalized stops /ᵐb/, /ⁿd/, /ᶯɖ/, and /ᵑɡ/. These segments occur only intervocalically: /haⁿdu/ ('moon') /haᶯɖuː/ ('uncooked rice') and /aᵑɡa/ ('mouth'). Dhivehi and Sinhalese are the only Indo-Arian languages that have prenasalized stops.

The influence of other languages has played a great role in Dhivehi phonology. For example the phoneme /z/ comes entirely from foreign influence[citation needed]: /ɡaːziː/ ('judge') is from Persian, /maːziː/ ('past') is from Urdu.

The phoneme /p/ also occurs only in borrowed words in Modern Standard Dhivehi: /ripoːtu/ ('report'). At one point, Dhivehi did not have the phoneme /f/, and /p/ occurred in the language without contrastive aspiration. Some time in the 17th century, word initial and intervocalic /p/ changed to /f/. Historical documents from the 11th century, for example, show 'five' rendered as /pas/ whereas today it is pronounced /fas/.

In standard Dhivehi when the phoneme /s/ occurs in the final position of a word it changes to [h] intervocalically when inflected. For example /bas/ ('word' or 'language') becomes /bahek/ ('a word' or 'a language') and /mas/ ('fish') becomes /mahek/ ('a fish'). /s/ and /h/ still contrastive, though: initially /hiᵑɡaː/ ('operating') and /siᵑɡaː/ ('lion') and intervocalically /aharu/ ('year') and /asaru/ ('effect').

/r/, a voiceless alveolar flap or trill, is peculiar to Dhivehi among the Indo-Aryan languages. But some people pronounce it as [ʂ] a retroflex grooved fricative.

Borrowed phonemes

Modern Standard Dhivehi has borrowed many phonemes from Arabic. These phonemes are used exclusively in loan words from Arabic, for example, the phoneme /x/ in words such as /xaːdim/ ('male servant'). The following table shows the phonemes that have been borrowed from Arabic/Persian together with their transliteration into Tāna.

Tāna Arabic / Persian SAMT IPA
ޙ ح /ħ/
ޚ خ x /x/
ޜ ژ ʒ /ʒ/
ޢ ع /ʔ/
ޣ غ ġ /ɣ/
ޥ و w /w/
ޛ ذ ź /ð/
ޠ ط ţ /tˤ/
ޡ ظ /zˤ/
ޘ ث /θ/
ޤ ق q /q/
ޞ ص ş /sˤ/
ޟ ض /dˤ/

Phonotactics

Native Dhivehi words do not allow initial consonant clusters; the syllable structure is (C)V(C) (i.e. one vowel with the option of a consonant in the onset and/or coda). This affects the introduction of loanwords, such as /is.kuːl/ From English school.


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Dhivehi literature — The first evidence of Dhivehi literature is known as Lōmāfānu (copper plate grants) from the 12th century. Lōmāfānu is in the oldest known written form of Mahal. Starting of modern era Husain Salaahuddheen wrote Siyarathunnabaviyyaa which is the… …   Wikipedia

  • English phonology — See also: Phonological history of English English phonology is the study of the sound system (phonology) of the English language. Like many languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In… …   Wikipedia

  • Navajo phonology — is the study of how speech sounds pattern and interact with each other in that language. The phonology of Navajo is intimately connected to its morphology. For example, the entire range of contrastive consonants is found only at the beginning of… …   Wikipedia

  • Modern Hebrew phonology — Main article: Hebrew language For assistance with IPA transcriptions of Hebrew for Wikipedia articles, see WP:IPA for Hebrew. This article is about the phonology of the Hebrew language based on the Israeli dialect. It deals with current phonology …   Wikipedia

  • Standard Chinese phonology — The phonology of Standard Chinese is reproduced below. Actual production varies widely among speakers, as people inadvertently introduce elements of their native dialects. By contrast, television and radio announcers are chosen for their… …   Wikipedia

  • Old Chinese phonology — The phonology of Old Chinese describes the language reflected by the rhymes of the Shijing and the phonetic components of Chinese characters, corresponding to the earlier half of the 1st millennium BC. Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the… …   Wikipedia

  • Ottawa phonology — Main article: Ottawa language Ottawa (also spelled Odawa) is a dialect of the Ojibwe language spoken in a series of communities in southern Ontario and a smaller number of communities in northern Michigan. Ottawa has a phonological inventory of… …   Wikipedia

  • Dutch phonology — For assistance with IPA transcriptions of Dutch for Wikipedia articles, see WP:IPA for Dutch and Afrikaans. Dutch grammar series Dutch grammar Dutch verbs Dutch conjugation t kofschip T rules Dutch nouns Dutch declension Gender in Dutch grammar… …   Wikipedia

  • Ojibwe phonology — The phonology of the Ojibwe language (also Ojibwa, Ojibway, or Chippewa, and most commonly referred to in the language as Anishinaabemowin) varies from dialect to dialect, but all varieties share common features. Ojibwe is an indigenous language… …   Wikipedia

  • Modern Greek phonology — For assistance with IPA transcriptions of Greek for Wikipedia articles, see WP:IPA for Greek. This page presents a sketch of the phonology of Standard Modern Greek. Contents 1 Consonants 1.1 Phonetic realisation 1.2 Sandhi rules …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”