Acehnese has a large vowel inventory, with ten oral monophthong vowels, twelve oral diphthongs, seven nasal monophthong vowels, and five nasal diphthongs.
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.
Oral vowels[]
Oral monophthong vowels in Acehnese are shown in the table below.
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| unr. | rnd. | ||
| 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.
| /iə/ | /ɯə/ | /uə/ |
| /ɛə/ | /ʌə/ | /ɔə/ |
Oral diphthong vowels ending with /i/ are shown in the table below.
| /ui/ | |
| /əi/ | /oi/ |
| /ʌi/ | /ɔi/ |
| /ai/ |
Nasal vowels[]
Nasal monophthong vowels in Acehnese are shown in the table below.
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| unr. | rnd. | ||
| 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.
| Labial | Labio- dental |
Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | p | b | t | d | c | ɟ | k | ɡ | ʔ | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||||||||
| Incomplete nasal | mb | nd | ɲɟ | ŋɡ | ||||||||||
| Trill | r | |||||||||||||
| Fricative | f | s | z | ʃ | h | |||||||||
| Approximant (Lateral) |
j | w | ||||||||||||
| l | ||||||||||||||
Notes:
- Syllable-final k always represents /ʔ/ save in certain recent loans
- /f/, /z/, and /ʃ/ are borrowed sounds, and are often replaced by /ph/, /dh/, and /ch/ respectively
- /mb/, /nd/, /ɲɟ/, and /ŋɡ/ are also known as "funny nasals"
Sound-spelling correspondences[]
In addition to the modern 26 letter basic Latin alphabet, Acehnese uses the supplementary letters è, é, ë, ô, and ö, making a total of 31 letters in its orthography.
| 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/ | bè /bɛ/ ‘smell’ | bèk /bɛʔ/ ‘prohibitive "don't" (e.g. bèk neupajôh boh gantang teucrôh lôn 'don't you eat my fries')' |
| ë | /ə/ | huë /huə/ ‘pull’ | huëk /huəʔ/ ‘choke’ |
| eu | /ɯ/ | keu /kɯ/ ‘front’ | 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’ | sut /sut/ ‘remove, detach’ |
Notes:
- ë is used only for diphthongs ending with /ə/