Sounds
The phoneme inventory of Marathi is similar to that of many other Indo-Aryan languages, especially that of the Konkani language. An IPA chart of all contrastive sounds in Marathi is provided below.
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Alveopalatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiceless stops |
p pʰ |
t̪ t̪ʰ |
ts |
ʈ ʈʰ |
tʃ tʃʰ |
k kʰ |
|
| Voiced stops |
b bʱ |
d̪ d̪ʱ |
dz dzʱ |
ɖ ɖʱ |
dʒ dʒʱ |
ɡ ɡʱ |
|
| Voiceless fricatives |
s | ʃ | h | ||||
| Nasals | m mʱ |
n̪ n̪ʱ |
ɳ |
||||
| Liquids | ʋ ʋʱ |
l ɾ lʱ ɾʱ |
ɭ | j |
Older aspirated *tsʰ, dzʱ have lost their onset, with *tsʰ merging with /s/ and *dzʱ being typically realized as an aspirated fricative, . This /ts, dz, zʱ/ series is not distinguished in writing from /tʃ, tʃʰ, dʒ, dʒʱ/.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Low | a |
There are two more vowels in Marathi to denote the pronunciations of English words such as of a in act and a in all. These are written as अॅ and ऑ. The IPA signs for these are and, respectively. Marathi retains the original Sanskrit pronunciations of certain alphabets such as the anusvāra (for instance, saṃhar, compared to sanhar in Hindi). Moreover, Marathi preserves certain Sanskrit patterns of pronunciation, as in the words purṇa and rāma compared to purṇ and rām in Hindi.
Read more about this topic: Marathi Language
Famous quotes containing the word sounds:
“I spoke at a woman’s club in Philadelphia yesterday and a young lady said to me afterwards, “Well, that sounds very nice, but don’t you think it is better to be the power behind the throne?” I answered that I had not had much experience with thrones, but a woman who has been on a throne, and who is now behind it, seems to prefer to be on the throne.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,—those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I’m not the man to baulk at a low smell,
I’m not the man to insist on asphodel.
This sounds like a He-fellow, don’t you think?
It sounds like that. I belch, I bawl, I drink.”
—Dame Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)