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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]
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 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 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 |
The table below shows the Acehnese consonant phonemes and the range of their realizations.[10]
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | plain | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |
| post-stopped | (mᵇ) | (nᵈ) | (ɲᶡ) | (ŋᶢ) | ||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | c | k | ʔ |
| voiced | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | ||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | h | |
| voiced | z | |||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||
| Trill | r | |||||
Notes:
The orthography of Achenese features 31 letters: the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet, è, é, ë, ô, and ö.
| 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’ |