Maldivian phonology

The phonemic inventory of Maldivian (Dhivehi) consists of 29 consonants and 10 vowels. Like other modern Indo-Aryan languages the Maldivian phonemic inventory shows an opposition of long and short vowels, of dental and retroflex consonants as well as single and geminate consonants.

• [æː] is developed as a sound from the diphthong /ai/.
• The short open back vowel is phonetically central [ä].

• The status of /ɲ/ as a phoneme is unclear. Except for two words, /ɲamɲam/ cynometra cauliflora (a kind of fruit) and /ɲaʋijani/ 'Gnaviyani' (alphabet letter), the /ɲ/ only occurs as the result of the fusion of /n/ and /i/: /du:ni/ 'bird', /du:ɲɲeʔ/ 'a bird'.
• /ʋ/ can occasionally be heard as a fricative [v], it has a [w] allophone occurring between vowel sounds /a/ and /u/.

Dental and retroflex stops are contrastive in Maldivian. For example: maḍun means ‘quietly’ madun means ‘seldom’. The segments /t/ and /d/ are articulated just behind the front teeth. The Maldivian segments /ʈ/, /ɖ/, /ʂ/, and /ɭ/ are not truly retroflex, but apical, produced at the very rear part of the alveolar ridge.

Maldivian has the prenasalized stops /ᵐb/, /ⁿd/, /ᶯɖ/, and /ᵑɡ/. These segments occur only intervocalically: /haⁿdu/ ('moon') /haᶯɖuː/ ('uncooked rice') and /aᵑɡa/ ('mouth'). Maldivian and Sinhalese are the only Indo-Aryan languages that have prenasalized stops.

The influence of other languages has played a great role in Maldivian phonology. For example, the phoneme /z/ comes entirely from foreign influence: /ɡaːziː/ ('judge') is from Persian, /maːziː/ ('past') is from Urdu.

The phoneme /p/ also occurs only in borrowed words in Modern Standard Maldivian: /ripoːtu/ ('report'). At one point, Maldivian did not have the phoneme /f/, and /p/ occurred in the language without contrastive aspiration. Some time in the 17th century, word initial and intervocalic /p/ changed to /f/. Historical documents from the 11th century, for example, show 'five' rendered as /pas̪/ whereas today it is pronounced /fas̪/.

In standard Maldivian when the phoneme /s/ occurs in the final position of a word it changes to [h] intervocalically when inflected. For example, /bas̪/ ('word' or 'language') becomes /baheʔ/ ('a word' or 'a language') and /mas/ ('fish') becomes /maheʔ/ ('a fish'). /s/ and /h/ still contrastive, though: initially /hiᵑɡaː/ ('operating') and /siŋɡaː/ ('lion') and intervocalically /aharu/ ('year') and /asaru/ ('effect').

/ʂ/ is peculiar to Dhivehi among Indo-Aryan languages. In some dialects, it is pronounced as a [ɽ̊] or [ɽ̊͜r̊].[2] The /ʂ/ is related historically and allophonically to /ʈ/ (but not to Sanskrit /ʂ/ or /ɕ/). Sometime after the 12th century, the intervocalic /ʈ/ became [ʂ] /raʈu/ 'island' (12th c.), [raʂu] 'island'. The /ʈ/ is retained in geminate clusters like /feʂuni:/ 'started', /faʈʈaifi/ 'has caused to start'. The contrast between /ʂ/ and /ʈ/ was made through loan words like /koʂani:/ 'cutting', /koʈari/ 'room'.[3]