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	iː			u	uː
Mid	e	eː			o	oː
Open			a	aː

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			l̪	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 Historical documents from the 11th century, for example, show 'five' rendered as /pas/ whereas today it is pronounced /fas/.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	ḥ	/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	ẓ	/zˤ/
ޘ	ث	ṡ	/θ/
ޤ	ق	q	/q/
ޞ	ص	ş	/sˤ/
ޟ	ض	ḑ	/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.