Acehnese phonology

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]

A trio of Acehnese speakers.

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’