Marathi phonology

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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 in native words are:

There is almost no phonemic length distinction, even though it is indicated in the script. Some educated speakers try to maintain a length distinction in learned borrowings (tatsamas) from Sanskrit.^[1]

Unlike Konkani or Hindustani, there are no phonemic nasal vowels in Marathi.^[2]

Marathi only has four phonemic diphthongs: /əi, əu, ai, au/.

There are two more vowel signs used when writing 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⟩.

Furthermore, ɤ and ʌ occur as allophones of ə, with words such as कळ (kaḷa) being pronounced as rather than and others such as महाराज (mahārāja) being pronounced as .^[3]

Marathi retains several features of Sanskrit that have been lost in other Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi and Bengali, especially in terms of pronunciation of vowels and consonants. For instance, Marathi retains the original diphthong qualities of ⟨ऐ⟩ , and ⟨औ⟩ which became monophthongs in Hindi. However, similar to speakers of Western Indo-Aryan languages and Dravidian languages, Marathi speakers tend to pronounce syllabic consonant ऋ ṛ as , unlike Northern Indo-Aryan languages which changed it to (e.g. the original Sanskrit pronunciation of the language's name-root saṃskṛta was , while in day-to-day Marathi it is ; in the aforementioned Northern Indo-Aryan languages, it is ). While Marathi has also undegone schwa deletion like other Indo-Aryan languages in word-final positions, it has conserved the schwas after consonant clusters in words like शब्द (śabda, word) and also reintroduced it for certain words.

Notes

• Marathi used to have a /t͡sʰ/ but it merged with /s/.^[4]
• Some speakers pronounce /d͡z, d͡zʱ/ as fricatives but the aspiration is maintained in /zʱ/.^[4]
• Spoken Marathi in Marathwada-Vidarbha regions frequently simplifies the retroflexes /ɳ/, and /ʂ/ to /n/ and /s/; for example, आणि (āṇi, 'and') will be pronounced as instead of .^[8]
• Unlike in Hindustani, Marathi does not contrast /ɖ/ and /ɽ/ or /ɖʱ/ and /ɽʱ/. Instead, the pairs are conditional allophones, being realized as stops in word-initial or post-nasal positions and as flaps in all other positions. ^[7]

In Marathi, the Indo-Aryan /l/ split into a retroflex lateral flap ḷ when singular and alveolar l when doubled. It shares this feature with Odia, Punjabi, Gujarati, and other Western Indo-Aryan languages. For example, Sanskrit kulam, 'clan' becomes kuḷa and Sanskrit kamalam, 'lotus' becomes kamaḷa, Sanskrit tila, velli, cullī, bhalla, lulla, Marathi tīḷ, vel, ċūl, bhalā, lulā. Another source is from sporadic ḍ, e.g. Sanskrit dāḍima, ṣṓḍaśa, 'pomegranate', '16', Marathi ḍāḷimba, soḷā.^[4] Marathi may have gotten ḷ due to the areal influence of the neighbouring Dravidian languages; there are some ḷ words loaned from Kannada like ṭhaḷak from taḷaku but most of the words are native. Vedic Sanskrit also had /𝼈, 𝼈ʱ/, but they merged with /ɖ, ɖʱ/ by the time of classical Sanskrit, these are unrelated to modern IA ḷ.

Palatalization is phonemic for some consonants, but it has not been well studied.^[9] Furthermore, palatalization is only denoted for र (r) in writing through the usage of the eyelash reph/raphar, further complicating analysis. The following table gives two minimal pairs (in Standard Marathi) as examples:^[10]

Additionally, an anusvara may be pronounced as a nasalized approximant in certain locations. When preceding श (ś), ष (ṣ), स (s), ह (h), or र (r), it is rendered as w̃. For example, the words संशय (saṁśaya, 'doubt') and संरक्षण (saṁrakṣaṇa, 'protection') are pronounced as and respectively. Before य (y), the anusvara is rendered as j̃: for example, संयुक्त (saṁyukta, 'joint') is pronounced as .^[11]

Some dialects tend to simplify consonant clusters that are otherwise plentiful in standard Marathi. This might be an adaptation to a faster speaking pace. For example, "त्यांच्यासाठी" is often pronounced as "त्यांसनी", eliminating the "chya" cluster.^[12]

• Ghatage, A.M (1970). Marathi Of Kasargod. Mumbai.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Sardesai, V.N. Some Problems in the Nasalization of Marathi, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
• Ghatage, M.M. Pronunciation Problems of the Marathi Speakers, Language in India.

• Marathi language sounds