Hindustani phonology
Hindustani is the lingua franca of northern India and Pakistan, and through its two standardized registers, Hindi and Urdu, a co-official language of India and co-official and national language of Pakistan respectively. Phonological differences between the two standards are minimal.
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
long
|
short
|
short | long | ||
| Close | iː | ɪ | ʊ | uː | |
| Close-mid | eː | oː | |||
| Open-mid | ɛː | ə | ɔː | ||
| Open | (æː) | aː | |||
Hindustani natively possesses a symmetrical ten-vowel system.[1] The vowels [ə], [ɪ], [ʊ] are always short in length, while the vowels [aː], [iː], [uː], [eː], [oː], [ɛː], [ɔː] are usually considered long, in addition to an eleventh vowel /æː/ which is found in English loanwords. The distinction between short and long vowels is often described as tenseness, with short vowels being lax, and long vowels being tense.[2] Vowels are somewhat longer before voiced stops than before voiceless stops.[3] Additionally, [ɛ] and [ɔ] occur as conditional allophones of /ə/.
Vowel [ə]
/ə/ is often realized more open than mid [
Vowel [aː]
The open central vowel is transcribed in IPA by either [aː] or [ɑː].
In Urdu, there is further short [a] (spelled ہ, as in کمرہ kamra [kəmra]) in word-final position, which contrasts with [aː] (spelled ا, as in لڑکا laṛkā [ləɽkaː]). This contrast is often not realized by Urdu speakers, and always neutralized in Hindi (where both sounds uniformly correspond to [aː]).[5][6]
Vowels [ɪ], [ʊ], [iː], [uː]
Among the
Vowels [ɛ], [ɛː]
The vowel represented graphically as ऐ – اَے (romanized as ai) has been variously transcribed as [ɛː] or [æː].[9] Among sources for this article, Ohala (1999), pictured to the right, uses [ɛː], while Shapiro (2003:258) and Masica (1991:110) use [æː]. Furthermore, an eleventh vowel /æː/ is found in English loanwords, such as /bæːʈ/ ('bat').[10] Hereafter, ऐ – اَے (romanized as ai) will be represented as [ɛː] to distinguish it from /æː/, the latter.
In addition, [ɛ] occurs as a conditioned
| Hindi/Urdu | Transliteration | Phonemic | Phonetic |
|---|---|---|---|
| कहना / کہنا "to say" | kahnā | /kəɦ.nɑː/ | [kɛɦ.nɑː] |
| शहर /شہر "city" | śahar | /ʃə.ɦəɾ/ | [ʃɛ.ɦɛɾ] |
| ठहरना / ٹھہرنا "to wait" | ṭhaharnā | /ʈʰə.ɦəɾ.nɑː/ | [ʈʰɛ.ɦɛɾ.nɑː] |
However, the fronting of schwa does not occur in words with a schwa only on one side of the /ɦ/ such as kahānī /kəɦaːniː/ (कहानी – کَہانی 'a story') or bāhar /baːɦər/ (बाहर – باہَر 'outside').
Vowels [ɔ], [ɔː]
The vowel [ɔ] occurs in proximity to /ɦ/ if the /ɦ/ is surrounded by one of the sides by a schwa and on other side by a round vowel (due to Hindustani phonotactics, this generally only occurs in the sequences /əɦʊ/ or /ʊɦə/). It differs from the vowel [ɔː] in that it is a short vowel. For example, in bahut /bəɦʊt/ the /ɦ/ is surrounded on one side by a schwa and a round vowel on the other side. One or both of the schwas will become [ɔ] giving the pronunciation [bɔɦɔt].
Some Eastern dialects kept /ɛː, ɔː/ as diphthongs, pronouncing them as [aɪ~əɪ, aʊ~əʊ].[11]
Nasalization of vowels
As in French and Portuguese, there are nasalized vowels in Hindustani. There is disagreement over the issue of the nature of nasalization (barring English-loaned /æ/ which is never nasalized[10]). Masica (1991:117) presents four differing viewpoints:
- there are no *[ẽː] and *[õː], possibly because of the effect of nasalization on vowel quality;
- there is phonemic nasalization of all vowels;
- all vowel nasalization is predictable (i.e. allophonic);
- Nasalized long vowel phonemes (/ɑ̃ː ĩː ũː ẽː ɛ̃ː õː ɔ̃ː/) occur word-finally and before voiceless stops; instances of nasalized short vowels ([ə̃ ɪ̃ ʊ̃]) and of nasalized long vowels before voiced stops (the latter, presumably because of a deleted nasal consonant) are allophonic.
Masica[12] supports this last view.
Vowel orthography with diacritics and English approximations
The principal vowel phonemes may be organised as follows to demonstrate the orthographic conventions for vowels.
| Vowels | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IPA | Hindi | ISO 15919 | Urdu[13] | Approximate English equivalent | |||
| Initial | Combining | Final | Medial | Initial | |||
| ə | अ | [14] | a | ـہ | ـ◌َـ | اَ | about |
| aː | आ | ा | ā | ـا | آ | far | |
| ɪ | इ | ि | i | ـی | ـ◌ِـ | اِ | still |
| iː | ई | ी | ī | ◌ِـیـ | اِیـ | fee | |
| ʊ | उ | ु | u | ـو | ـ◌ُـ | اُ | book |
| uː | ऊ | ू | ū | ◌ُـو | اُو | moon | |
| eː | ए | े | ē | ے | ـیـ | ایـ | mate |
| ɛː | ऐ | ै | ai | ◌َـے | ◌َـیـ | اَیـ | fairy |
| oː | ओ | ो | ō | ـو | او | force | |
| ɔː | औ | ौ | au | ◌َـو | اَو | lot (Received Pronunciation) | |
| ʰ | [15] | h | ھ[15] | aspiration of the preceding consonant, as in cake | |||
| ◌̃ | [16] | ँ | m̐ | ں | ـن٘ـ | ن٘ـ[17] | heavy nasalisation of the preceding vowel, like can't in rapid GA
|
| [18] | [19] | ं | ṁ | homorganic nasal before the succeeding consonant, like jungle or branch, and light vowel nasalisation | |||
Consonants
Hindustani has a core set of 28 consonants inherited from earlier Indo-Aryan. Supplementing these are two consonants that are internal developments in specific word-medial contexts,[21] and seven consonants originally found in loan words, whose expression is dependent on factors such as status (class, education, etc.) and cultural register (Modern Standard Hindi vs Urdu).
Most native consonants may occur geminate (doubled in length; exceptions are /bʱ, ɽ, ɽʱ, ɦ/). Geminate consonants are always medial and preceded by one of the interior vowels (that is, /ə/, /ɪ/, or /ʊ/). They all occur monomorphemically except [ʃː], which occurs only in a few Sanskrit loans where a morpheme boundary could be posited in between, e.g. /nɪʃ + ʃiːl/ for niśśīl [nɪˈʃːiːl] ('without shame').[10]
For the English speaker, a notable feature of the Hindustani consonants is that there is a four-way distinction of phonation among plosives, rather than the two-way distinction found in English. The phonations are:
- tenuis, as /p/, which is like ⟨p⟩ in English spin
- voiced, as /b/, which is like ⟨b⟩ in English bin
- aspirated, as /pʰ/, which is like ⟨p⟩ in English pin, and
- murmured, as /bʱ/.
The last is commonly called "voiced aspirate", though Shapiro (2003:260) notes that,
"Evidence from experimental phonetics, however, has demonstrated that the two types of sounds involve two distinct types of voicing and release mechanisms. The series of so-called voice aspirates should now properly be considered to involve the voicing mechanism of murmur, in which the air flow passes through an aperture between the arytenoid cartilages, as opposed to passing between the ligamental vocal bands."
The murmured consonants are believed to be a reflex of murmured consonants in Proto-Indo-European, a phonation that is absent in all branches of the Indo-European family except Indo-Aryan and Armenian.
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Retroflex | Post-alv./ Palatal |
Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n
|
(ɳ) | (ɲ) | ŋ | |||
Affricate
|
voiceless | p | t̪
|
ʈ | t͡ʃ | k | (q) | |
| voiceless aspirated | pʰ | t̪ʰ | ʈʰ | t͡ʃʰ | kʰ | |||
| voiced | b | d̪
|
ɖ | d͡ʒ | ɡ | |||
| voiced aspirated | bʱ | d̪ʱ | ɖʱ | d͡ʒʱ | ɡʱ | |||
Fricative
|
voiceless | f | s | (ʂ) | ʃ | (x) | ɦ | |
| voiced | ʋ | z | (ʒ) | (ɣ) | ||||
Approximant
|
l
|
j | ||||||
Tap/Trill
|
unaspirated
|
ɾ | ɽ | |||||
aspirated
|
ɽʱ | |||||||
- Notes
- Marginal and non-universal phonemes are in parentheses.
- /ɽ/ is lateral [𝼈] for some speakers.[22][[[Wikipedia:Cleanup|can the aspirated (ɽʱ) also be lateral?]]]
- /x/, /ɣ/, and /q/ are post-velar.[23]
- /x/, /ɣ/, /z/, and /q/ are mostly replaced by /kʰ/, /g/, /d͡ʒ/, and /k/ in Hindi respectively, except in the careful speech of educated speakers.[24][25][26] /ʒ/ is found in Urdu and is rarer in Hindi, often being replaced with /z/ (or further by /d͡ʒ/) in the latter; an example of a word containing this sound is aždahā [əʒ.d̪ə.ɦɑː] (अझ़दहा – اژدہا 'dragon').[27][28][29]
Stops in final position are not released, although they continue to maintain the four-way phonation distinction in final position. /ʋ/ varies freely with [v], and can also be pronounced [w]. /r/ is usually flapped or trilled.
The fricative /ɦ/ in Hindustani is typically voiced (as [ɦ]), especially when surrounded by vowels, but there is no phonemic difference between this voiced fricative and its voiceless counterpart [h].
Hindustani also has a phonemic difference between the dental plosives and the so-called retroflex plosives. The dental plosives in Hindustani are laminal-denti alveolar as in Spanish, and the tongue-tip must be well in contact with the back of the upper front teeth. The retroflex series is not purely retroflex; it actually has an apico-postalveolar (also described as apico-pre-palatal) articulation, and sometimes in words such as ṭūṭā /ʈuːʈaː/ (टूटा – ٹُوٹا 'broken') it even becomes alveolar.[32]
In some
Allophony of [v] and [w]
Hindustani does not distinguish between [v] and [w], specifically Hindi. These are distinct phonemes in English, but conditional allophones of the phoneme /ʋ/ in Hindustani (written ⟨व⟩ in Hindi or ⟨و⟩ in Urdu), meaning that contextual rules determine when it is pronounced as [v] and when it is pronounced as [w]. /ʋ/ is pronounced [w] in onglide position, i.e. between an onset consonant and a following vowel, as in pakwān (पकवान پکوان, 'food dish'), and [v] elsewhere, as in vrat (व्रत ورت, 'vow'). Native Hindi speakers are usually unaware of the allophonic distinctions, though these are apparent to native English speakers.[34]
In most situations, the allophony is non-conditional, i.e. the speaker can choose [v], [w], or an intermediate sound based on personal habit and preference, and still be perfectly intelligible, as long as the meaning is constant. This includes words such as advait (अद्वैत ادویت) (pronounced [əd̪ˈʋɛːt̪]), which can be pronounced equally correctly as [əd̪ˈwɛːt̪] or [əd̪ˈvɛːt̪].[34]
External borrowing
Sanskrit borrowing has reintroduced /ɳ/ and /ʂ/ into formal Modern Standard Hindi. They occur primarily in Sanskrit loanwords and proper nouns. In casual speech, they are sometimes replaced with /n/ and /ʃ/.[10] /ɳ/ does not occur word-initially and has a nasalized flap [ɽ̃] as a common allophone.[21]
Loanwords from Persian (including some words which Persian itself borrowed from Arabic or Turkish) introduced six consonants, /f, z, ʒ, q, x, ɣ/. Being Persian in origin, these are seen as a defining feature of Urdu, although these sounds officially exist in Hindi and modified Devanagari characters are available to represent them.[35][36] Among these, /f, z/, also found in English and Portuguese loanwords, are now considered well-established in Hindi; indeed, /f/ appears to be encroaching upon and replacing /pʰ/ even in native (non-Persian, non-English, non-Portuguese) Hindi words as well as many other Indian languages such as Bengali, Gujarati and Marathi, as happened in Greek with phi.[21] This /pʰ/ to /f/ shift also occasionally occurs in Urdu.[37] While [z] is a foreign sound, it is also natively found as an allophone of /s/ beside voiced consonants.
The other three Persian loans, /q, x, ɣ/, are still considered to fall under the domain of Urdu, and are also used by some Hindi speakers; however, other Hindi speakers may assimilate these sounds to /k, kʰ, g/ respectively.
Being the main sources from which Hindustani draws its higher, learned terms– English, Sanskrit, Arabic, and to a lesser extent Persian provide loanwords with a rich array of consonant clusters. The introduction of these clusters into the language contravenes a historical tendency within its native core vocabulary to eliminate clusters through processes such as cluster reduction and epenthesis.[40] Schmidt (2003:293) lists distinctively Sanskrit/Hindi biconsonantal clusters of initial /kr, kʃ, st, sʋ, ʃr, sn, nj/ and final /tʋ, ʃʋ, nj, lj, rʋ, dʒj, rj/, and distinctively Perso-Arabic/Urdu biconsonantal clusters of final /ft, rf, mt, mr, ms, kl, tl, bl, sl, tm, lm, ɦm, ɦr/.
Suprasegmental features
Hindustani has a
- A light syllable (one mora) ends in a short vowel /ə, ɪ, ʊ/: V
- A heavy syllable (two moras) ends in a long vowel /aː, iː, uː, eː, ɛː, oː, ɔː/ or in a short vowel and a consonant: VV, VC
- An extra-heavy syllable (three moras) ends in a long vowel and a consonant, or a short vowel and two consonants: VVC, VCC
Stress is on the heaviest syllable of the word, and in the event of a tie, on the last such syllable. If all syllables are light, the penultimate is stressed. However, the final mora of the word is ignored when making this assignment (Hussein 1997) [or, equivalently, the final syllable is stressed either if it is extra-heavy, and there is no other extra-heavy syllable in the word or if it is heavy, and there is no other heavy or extra-heavy syllable in the word]. For example, with the ignored mora in parentheses:[41]
- kaː.ˈriː.ɡə.ri(ː)
- ˈtʃəp.kə.lɪ(ʃ)
- ˈʃoːx.dʒə.baː.ni(ː)
- ˈreːz.ɡaː.ri(ː)
- sə.ˈmɪ.t(ɪ)
- ˈqɪs.mə(t)
- ˈbaː.ɦə(r)
- roː.ˈzaː.na(ː)
- rʊ.ˈkaː.ja(ː)
- ˈroːz.ɡaː(r)
- aːs.ˈmaːn.dʒaː(h) ~ ˈaːs.mãː.dʒaː(h)
- kɪ.ˈdʱə(r)
- rʊ.pɪ.ˈa(ː)
- dʒə.ˈnaː(b)
- əs.ˈbaː(b)
- mʊ.səl.ˈmaː(n)
- ɪɴ.qɪ.ˈlaː(b)
- pər.ʋər.dɪ.ˈɡaː(r)[clarification needed]
Content words in Hindustani normally begin on a low
See also
- IPA vowel chart with audio
- IPA pulmonic consonant chart with audio
- IPA chart (vowels and consonants) - 2015. (pdf file)
- Schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages
- Urdu alphabet
- Devanagari
References
- ^ Masica (1991:110)
- ^ Kachru 2006, p. 15.
- ^ Ohala (1999:102)
- ^ a b c Ohala (1999:102)
- ^ Kelkar (1968), p. 47.
- ^ Schmidt (2003), pp. 293, 310.
- ^ Masica (1991:111)
- ^ a b Shapiro (2003:258)
- ^ Masica (1991:114)
- ^ a b c d e Ohala (1999:101)
- ^ Cardona & Jain (2003), p. 283.
- ^ Masica (1991:117–118)
- ^ Diacritics in Urdu are normally not written and usually implied and interpreted based on the context of the sentence
- Devanagari script. However, there does exist a diacritic, ्, for suppressing /ə/, also though it is not often used or needed in modern Hindi orthography.
- ^ a b Hindi has individual letters for each of the aspirated consonants, whereas Urdu has a specific letter to represent aspiration after any consonant
- ^ As this is a diacritic affecting the preceding vowel, it cannot be the initial character of a word.
- ^ In Urdu the initial form (letter) for representing a nasalised word[clarification needed] is: ن٘ (nūn + small nūn ghunna diacritic)
- ^ As this symbol can represents any nasal consonant phoneme depending on which consonant it is followed by, the particular IPA character used to represent this sound depends on the context.
- ^ This character does not have an initial form and is not used for initial nasals in Hindi
- ^ Derived: Phonetics from UCLA.edu but re-recorded.
- ^ a b c d Shapiro (2003:260)
- ^ Masica (1991:98)
- ^ Kachru (2006:20)
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4614-1137-6.
A few sounds, borrowed from the other languages like Persian and Arabic, are written with a dot (bindu or nukta) as shown in Table 2.2. …those who come from rural backgrounds and do not speak really good Khariboli, pronounce these sounds as the nearest equivalents in Hindi.
- ^ ISBN 9780486137919.
These letters—q, kh, gh, z, f—occur in words of Arabic or Persian origin. Many speakers maintain these sounds in their speech, but others often pronounce them as k, kh, g, j and ph, respectively.
- ^ Kachru 2006, p. 20.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-252-05172-2.
Hindi has a nasal sound roughly equivalent to the n in the English sang, transliterated here as ṅ or ṁ, and has two slightly differing sh sounds, transliterated as ś and ṣ. ... A few words contain consonants…from Arabic, Persian, Portuguese, and English: क़ (ق) is transliterated as q, ख़ (خ) as kh, ग़ (غ) as g, ज़ (ظ ,ز, or ض) as z, झ़ (ژ) as zh, and फ़ (ف) as f.
- S2CID 26461938.
Only in Hindi 10 Phonemes व /v/ क़ /q/ ञ /ɲ/ य /j/ ष /ʂ/ ख़ /x/ ग़ /ɣ/ ज़ /z/ झ़ /ʒ/ फ़ /f/
- Rekhta Dictionary. 2023. Retrieved 12 December 2023.
- ^ Nazir Hassan (1980) Urdu phonetic reader, Omkar Nath Koul (1994) Hindi Phonetic Reader, Indian Institute of Language Studies; Foreign Service Institute (1957) Hindi: Basic Course
- ^ "r is a tip dental trill, and often has but one flap", Thomas Cummings (1915) An Urdu Manual of the Phonetic, Inductive Or Direct Method
- ISBN 81-225-0017-X.
- ^ Masica (1991:97)
- ^ ISBN 978-1-901471-02-1.
... showed extremely regular patterns. As is not uncommon in a study of subphonemic detail, the objective data patterned much more cleanly than intuitive judgments ... [w] occurs when /व و/ is in onglide position ... [v] occurs otherwise ...
- ^ ISBN 9788120805088. Retrieved 25 August 2009.
- ^ "Hindi Urdu Machine Transliteration using Finite-state Transducers" (PDF). Association for Computational Linguistics. Retrieved 25 August 2009.
- ISBN 9781135797119– via Google Books.
- ^ a b Masica (1991:92)
- ISBN 978-81-208-0508-8.
In addition to the basic consonantal sounds discussed in sections 3.1 and 3.2, many speakers use any or all five additional consonants (क़ ḳ, ख़ ḳh,ग़ ġ, ज़ z, फ़ f) in words of foreign origin (primarily from Persian, Arabic, English, and Portuguese). The last two of these, ज़ z and फ़ f, are the initial sounds in English zig and fig respectively. The consonant क़ ḳ is a voiceless uvular stop, somewhat like k, but pronounced further back in the mouth. ख़ ḳh is a voiceless fricative similar in pronunciation to the final sound of the German ach. ग़ ġ is generally pronounced as a voiceless uvular fricative, although it is occasionally heard as a stop rather than a fricative. In devanāgari each of these five sounds is represented by the use of a subscript dot under one of the basic consonant signs.
- ^ Shapiro (2003:261)
- ^ Hayes (1995:276)
- ^ http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/linguistics/theses/2001Dyrud.PDF Dyrud, Lars O. (2001) Hindi-Urdu: Stress Accent or Non-Stress Accent? (University of North Dakota, master's thesis)
- ^ "Word boundary detection using pitch variations" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 October 2007. Retrieved 18 October 2007. Ramana Rao, G.V. and Srichand, J. (1996) Word Boundary Detection Using Pitch Variations. (IIT Madras, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering)
Bibliography
- Cardona, George; Jain, Dhanesh (2003), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, ISBN 9781135797102
- ISBN 978-0-521-29944-2.
- Hayes, Bruce (1995), Metrical stress theory, University of Chicago Press.
- Hussein, Sarmad (1997), Phonetic Correlates of Lexical Stress in Urdu, Northwestern University.
- ISBN 90-272-3812-X.
- Kelkar, Ashok R. (1968). Studies in Hindi-Urdu, I: Introduction and Word Phonology. Building Centenary and Silver Jubilee Series, 35. Poona: Deccan College.
- Ohala, Manjari (1999), "Hindi", in International Phonetic Association (ed.), Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: a Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge University Press, pp. 100–103, ISBN 978-0-521-63751-0
- Schmidt, Ruth Laila (2003), "Urdu", in Cardona, George; Jain, Dhanesh (eds.), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, pp. 286–350, ISBN 978-0-415-77294-5.
- Shapiro, Michael C. (2003), "Hindi", in Cardona, George; Jain, Dhanesh (eds.), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, pp. 250–285, ISBN 978-0-415-77294-5.