Acehnese phonology

A trio of Acehnese speakers.

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]

Vowels

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 vowels

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 vowels

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

Consonants

The table below shows the Acehnese consonant phonemes and the range of their realizations. ^{[10] [11]}

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	plain	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
	post-oralized	( mᵇ )	( nᵈ )	( ɲᶡ )	( ŋᶢ )
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	c	k	ʔ
	voiced	b	d	ɟ	ɡ
Fricative			s	ʃ		h
Approximant			l	j	w
Trill			r

Notes:

• The following stop and liquid sound combinations with /h/, as /_h/; are heard as aspirated /pʰ, tʰ, cʰ, kʰ/ or murmured /bʱ, dʱ, ɟʱ, ɡʱ/; /lʱ, rʱ/.
• The fricative /s/ is described by Durie as "a laminal alveo-dental fricative with a wide channel area". ^[12]
• The stop /t/ is slightly retroflex. ^{[13] [ page needed ]}
• Syllable-final orthographic ⟨k⟩ always represents /ʔ/ save in certain recent loans
• Arabic phonemes such as /z/, /f/, and /q/ are often nativised to /d/, /pʰ/, and /k/ respectively. Arabic /ʃ/ and /x/ varies, /ʃ/ can be realised as /c/, /cʰ/, or /s/, and /x/ can be realised as /kʰ/, /k/, or /h/.
• The phoneme /pʰ/ is often articulated as the affricate /ɸ/, Acehnese speakers realise the phoneme /f/ as /ɸ/, both in Arabic and modern loans. ^[12]
• The nasals /m/, /n/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/ are realized as post-oralized nasals (also called "funny nasals") before oral vowels and consonants. ^{[14] [15]} They are distinct from the nasal–plosive sequences /mb/, /nd/, /ɲɟ/, /ŋɡ/, e.g. in [banᵈa] 'port' vs [mandum] 'all'. ^[16]

Orthography

The orthography of Achenese features 31 letters: the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet, è, é, ë, ô, and ö.

Vowels

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’

Notes

1. Pillai & Yusuf (2012 :1030), citing Asyik (1987 :17)
2. Pillai & Yusuf (2012 :1031), citing Asyik (1987 :17–18)
3. Pillai & Yusuf (2012 :1032), citing Asyik (1987 :17)
4. Pillai & Yusuf (2012 :1032), citing Asyik (1987 :17)
5. Pillai & Yusuf (2012 :1031), citing Asyik (1987 :17–18)
6. Pillai & Yusuf (2012 :1031), citing Asyik (1987 :17)
7. Pillai & Yusuf (2012 :1031), citing Asyik (1987 :17–18)
8. Pillai & Yusuf (2012 :1031), citing Asyik (1987 :17–18)
9. Pillai & Yusuf (2012 :1033), citing Asyik (1987 :17)
10. Asyik (1982 :3)
11. Durie 1984, pp. 13–15.
12. Durie 1984, p. 18.
13. Asyik (1987)
14. Durie (1984 :24)
15. Asyik (1982 :2), citing Lawler (1977)
16. Long & Maddieson (1993) "Consonantal evidence against Quantal Theory", UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 83, p. 144.

References

• Asyik, Abdul Gani (1982). "The Agreement System in Acehnese" (PDF). Mon-Khmer Studies . 11: 1–33. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 February 2012.
• Asyik, Abdul Gani (1987). A Contextual Grammar of Acehnese Sentences (PDF) (PhD thesis). The University of Michigan. Archived from the original on 24 July 2011.
• Durie, Mark (1984). A grammar of Acehnese (PhD thesis). Australian National University. doi:10.25911/5d6fa25bcc31c. hdl: 1885/138059 .
• Lawler, John M. (1977). "A Agrees with B in Achenese: A Problem for Relational Grammar". In Cole, P.; Sacock, J. (eds.). Grammatical Relations. Syntax and Semantics 8. New York: Academic Press. pp. 219–248. doi:10.1163/9789004368866_010.
• Pillai, Stefanie; Yusuf, Yunisrina Qismullah (2012). "An Instrumental Analysis of Acehnese Oral Vowels" (PDF). Language and Linguistics. 13 (6): 1029–1050. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 31 October 2014.