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[]
Vowels in native words are:
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i iː | u uː | |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Low | a |
Consonants[]
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | plain | m | n | ɳ | (ɲ) | (ŋ) | ||
| murmured | mʱ | nʱ | ɳʱ | |||||
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | t͡s | ʈ | t͡ɕ | k | |
| aspirated | pʰ~f | tʰ | ʈʰ | t͡ɕʰ | kʰ | |||
| voiced | b | d | d͡z~z | ɖ | d͡ʑ | ɡ | ||
| murmured | bʱ | dʱ | d͡zʱ~zʱ | ɖʱ | d͡ʑʱ | ɡʱ | ||
| Fricative | f | s | ʂ | ɕ | x | ɦ | ||
| Approximant | plain | ʋ | l | ɭ | j | |||
| murmured | ʋʱ | lʱ | (jʱ)[2] | |||||
| Flap/Trill | plain | ɾ | ɭ̆[3] | |||||
| murmured | ɾʱ | |||||||