The phonology of Mundari is similar to the surrounding closely related Austroasiatic languages but considerably different from either Indo-Aryan or Dravidian. Perhaps the most foreign phonological influence has been on the vowels. Whereas the branches of Austroasiatic in Southeast Asia are rich in vowel phonemes, Mundari has only five. The consonant inventory of Mundari is similar to other Austroasiatic languages with the exception of retroflex consonants, which seem to appear only in loanwords. (Osada 2008)
Vowels[]
Mundari has five vowel phonemes. All vowels have long and short as well as nasalized allophones, but neither length nor nasality are contrastive. All vowels in open monosyllables are quantitatively longer than those in closed syllables, and those following nasal consonants or /ɟ/ are nasalized. Vowels preceding or following /ɳ/ are also nasalized.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Open | æ | a |
Consonants[]
Mundari's consonant inventory consists of 23 basic phonemes. The Naguri and Kera dialects include aspirated stops as additional phonemes, here enclosed in parentheses.
| Labial | Dental | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | voiceless | p | t̪ | ʈ | t͡ɕ | k | ʔ |
| aspirated | (pʰ) | (t̪ʰ) | (ʈʰ) | (t͡ɕʰ) | (kʰ) | ||
| voiced | b | d̪ | ɖ | d͡ʑ | g | ||
| Fricative | s̪ | h | |||||
| Nasal | m | n̪ | ɳ | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Approximant | w | l | ɽ | j | |||
| Trill | r |