Acehnese, the language spoken by the Acehnese people of Aceh, Indonesia, has a large vowel inventory compared to Indonesian, with ten oral monophthong vowels, [1] twelve oral diphthongs, [2] seven nasal monophthong vowels, [3] and five nasal diphthongs. [4]
Native-speaking linguists divide vowels in Acehnese into several categories: oral monophthongs, oral diphthongs (which are further divided into the ones ending with /ə/ and with /i/), nasal monophthongs, and nasal diphthongs. [5]
Oral monophthong vowels in Acehnese are shown in the table below. [6]
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | i | ɯ | u |
Close-mid | e | ə | o |
Open-mid | ɛ | ʌ | ɔ |
Open | a |
Oral diphthong vowels ending with /ə/ are shown in the table below. [7]
Front | Central | Back |
---|---|---|
/iə/ | /ɯə/ | /uə/ |
/ɛə/ | /ʌə/ | /ɔə/ |
Oral diphthong vowels ending with /i/ are shown in the table below. [8]
Central | Back |
---|---|
/ui/ | |
/əi/ | /oi/ |
/ʌi/ | /ɔi/ |
/ai/ |
Nasal monophthong vowels in Acehnese are shown in the table below. [9]
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | ĩ | ɯ̃ | ũ |
Open-mid | ɛ̃ | ʌ̃ | ɔ̃ |
Open | ã |
The table below shows the Acehnese consonant phonemes and the range of their realizations. [10]
Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | plain | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |
post-stopped | ( mᵇ ) | ( nᵈ ) | ( ɲᶡ ) | ( ŋᶢ ) | ||
Plosive | voiceless | p | t | c | k | ʔ |
voiced | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | ||
Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | h | |
voiced | z | |||||
Approximant | l | j | w | |||
Trill | r |
Notes:
The orthography of Achenese features 31 letters: the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet, è, é, ë, ô, and ö.
Grapheme | Phoneme (IPA) | Open syllable | Closed syllable |
---|---|---|---|
a | /a/ | ba /ba/ ‘carry’ | bak /baʔ/ ‘at, tree’ |
e | /ə/ | le /lə/ ‘many’ | let /lət/ ‘pull out’ |
é | /e/ | baté /bate/ ‘cup, betel tray’ | baték /bateʔ/ ‘batik’ |
è | /ɛ/ | bèe /bɛə/ ‘smell’ | bèk /bɛʔ/ ‘prohibitive "don't" (e.g. bèk neupajôh boh gantang teucrôh lôn 'don't you eat my fries')' |
eu | /ɯ/ | keu /kɯ/ ‘for’ | keuh /kɯh/ ‘so (e.g. nyan keuh), pronominal affix for second person (e.g. droe-keuh)’ |
i | /i/ | di /di/ 'in, from' | dit /dit/ 'few, small amount' |
o | /ɔ/ | yo /jɔ/ ‘afraid’ | yok /jɔʔ/ ‘shake’ |
ô | /o/ | rô /ro/ ‘spill’ | rôh /roh/ ‘enter’ |
ö | /ʌ/ | pö /pʌ/ ‘fly’ | pöt /pʌt/ ‘pluck, pick’ |
u | /u/ | su /su/ ‘sound, voice’ | cut /cut/ ‘small’ |
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