Marathi phonology

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

Vowels

Vowels in native words are:

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i iː		u uː
Mid	e	ə	o
Low		aː

There are no nasal vowels.

Like other alphasyllabaries, Devanagari writes out syllables by adding vowel diacritics to consonant bases. The table below includes all the vowel symbols used in Marathi, along with a transliteration of each sound into Latin script and IPA.

Devanagari	Transliterated	IPA	Pronunciation
अ	a	/ə/
आ	ā	/aː/
इ	i	/i/
ई	ī	/iː/
उ	u	/u/
ऊ	ū	/uː/
ऋ	ṛ	/ru/
ए	e	/e/
ऐ	ai	/əi/
ओ	o	/o/
औ	au	/əu/
अं	aṃ	/əm/
अः	aḥ	/əɦə/

Marathi furthermore contrasts /əi, əu/ with /ai, au/.

There are two more vowels in Marathi to denote the pronunciations of English words such as of /æ/ in act and /ɔ/ in all. These are written as ⟨अ‍ॅ⟩ and ⟨ऑ⟩.

Marathi retains several features of Sanskrit that have been lost in north-Indian Sanskrit-based languages such as Hindi and Bengali, especially in terms of pronunciation of vowels and consonants. For instance, Marathi retains the original Sanskrit pronunciation of ⟨अं⟩ [əⁿ], ⟨ऐ⟩ [əi], and ⟨औ⟩ [əu]. However, as was done in Gujarati, Marathi speakers tend to pronounce ऋ ṛ somewhat similar to [ru], unlike most other Indic languages which changed it to [ri] (e.g. the original Sanskrit pronunciation of the language's name was saṃskṛtam, while in day-to-day Marathi and Gujarati it is saṃskrut. In other Indic languages, it is closer to sanskrit). Spoken Marathi allows for conservative stress patterns in words like राम (rama) with an emphasis on the ending vowel sound, a feature that has been lost in Hindi.

Consonants

Consonants[1]

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	plain	m	n	ɳ	(ɲ)	(ŋ)
	murmured	mʱ	nʱ	ɳʱ
Stop	voiceless	p	t	ʈ	tɕ	k
	aspirated	pʰ~f	tʰ	ʈʰ	tɕʰ	kʰ
	voiced	b	d	ɖ	dʑ	ɡ
	murmured	bʱ~v	dʱ	ɖʱ	dʑʱ	ɡʱ
Fricative			s	ʂ	ɕ		ɦ
Approximant	plain	ʋ	l		j
	murmured	ʋʱ	lʱ		(jʱ)[2]
Flap/Trill	plain		ɾ~r	ɭ̆
	murmured		ɾʱ~rʱ

The table below includes all the consonant bases onto which vowel diacritics are placed. The lack of a vowel diacritic can either indicate the lack of a vowel, or the existence of the default, or "inherent", vowel, which in the case of Marathi is the schwa.

क	ख	ग	घ	ङ
ka /kə/	kha /kʰə/	ga /ɡə/	gha /ɡʱə/	ṅa (/ŋə/)
च	छ	ज	झ	ञ
ca /tɕə/	cha /tɕʰə/	ja /dʑə/	jha /dʑʱə/	ña /jə̃/
ट	ठ	ड	ढ	ण
ṭa /ʈə/	ṭha /ʈʰə/	ḍa /ɖə/	ḍha /ɖʱə/	ṇa /ɳə/
त	थ	द	ध	न
ta /tə/	tha /tʰə/	da /də/	dha /dʱə/	na /nə/
प	फ	ब	भ	म
pa /pə/	pha /pʰə/ or /fə/	ba /bə/	bha /bʱə/ or /və/	ma /mə/
य	र	ल	व	श
ya /jə/	ra /rə/	la /lə/	va /ʋə/	śa /ʃə/
ष	स	ह	ळ	क्ष	ज्ञ
ṣa /ʂə/	sa /sə/	ha /ɦə/	ḷa /ɭə/	kṣa /kɕə/	jña /ɡɲə/

A defining feature of the Marathi language is the frequent substitution of the consonant ल (la) in Sanskrit words with the retroflex lateral flap ळ (ḷa). For instance, कुळ (kuḷa) for the Sanskrit कुलम् (kulam 'clan') and कमळ (kamaḷ) for Sanskrit कमलम् (kamalam 'lotus'). ळ is possibly an import in Marathi from Dravidian languages, although it may also have originated from Vedic Sanskrit.

Example of consonant–vowel combination

The combination of the vowels with the k-series

Script	Pronunciation (IPA)
क	/kə/
का	/kaː/
कि	/ki/
की	/kiː/
कु	/ku/
कू	/kuː/
कृ	/kru/
के	/ke/
कै	/kəi̯/
को	/ko/
कौ	/kəu̯/
कं	/kəm/
कः	/kəɦ(ə)/

Consonant clusters

In Marathi, the consonants by default come with a schwa. Therefore, तयाचे will be 'təyāce', not 'tyāce'. To form 'tyāce', one should add त् to याचे, which would yield त्याचे.

References

1. Colin Masica, 1991, The Indo-Aryan Languages
2. In Kudali dialect

External links

• Marathi language sounds