s of Afrikaans on a
vowel chart. Afrikaans has an extensive
vowel inventory consisting of 17 vowel phonemes, including 10
monophthongs and 7
diphthongs. There are also 7 marginal monophthongs.
Monophthongs The phonetic quality of the close vowels • tends to be merged with into . • is weakly rounded and could be more narrowly transcribed as or . Thus, it is sometimes transcribed .
The phonetic quality of the mid vowels • vary between mid or close-mid . • According to some scholars, the stressed allophone of is actually closer than mid (). However, other scholars do not distinguish between stressed and unstressed schwas. This article uses the symbol regardless of the exact height of the vowel. • The central , not the front , are the unrounded counterparts of . Phonetically, have been variously described as mid and open-mid . • are rather weakly rounded, and many speakers merge with into , even in formal speech. The merger has been noted in colloquial speech since the 1920s.
The phonetic quality of the open vowels • In some words such as
vanaand 'this evening; tonight', unstressed is actually a schwa , not . • is open near-front , but older sources describe it as near-open central and open central . • is either open near-back or open back . Especially in stressed positions, the back realization may be rounded , and sometimes it may be even as high as the phoneme. The rounded realization is associated with younger white speakers, especially female speakers of northern accents.
Other notes • As phonemes, and occur only in the words
spieël 'mirror' and
koeël 'bullet', which used to be pronounced with sequences and respectively. In other cases, and occur as allophones of and respectively before . • Close vowels are phonetically long before . • contrasts with only in the minimal pair
pers 'press' –
pêrs 'purple'. • Before the sequences , the and contrasts are neutralized in favour of the long variants and , respectively. • occurs only in the word
wîe 'wedges', which is realized as either or (with a weak ). • The orthographic sequence is realised as either or (with a weak ). • occur only in a few words. • As a phoneme, occurs only in some loanwords from English, such as
pêl 'pal', or as a dialectal allophone of before , most commonly in the former
Transvaal and
Free State provinces. • has been variously transcribed with , and . This article uses . • has been variously transcribed with and . This article uses the former symbol. • In some words, such as
hamer, short is in free variation with long despite the fact that the spelling suggests the latter. In some words, such as
laat (vb. 'let'), the pronunciation with short occurs only in colloquial language, to distinguish from homophones (
laat, adj. 'late'). In some other words, such as
aan 'on', the pronunciation with short is already a part of the standard language. The shortening of has been noted as early as 1927. • The orthographic sequence can be pronounced as either or (with a weak ).
Nasalized vowels In some instances of the postvocalic sequence , is realized as nasalisation (and lengthening, if the vowel is short) of the preceding monophthong, which is stronger in some speakers than others, but there also are speakers retaining as well as the original length of the preceding vowel. • The sequence in words such as
dans (meaning "dance") is realised as . In monosyllabic words, that is the norm. • The sequence in more common words (such as
Afrikaans) is realized as either or . In less common words (such as
Italiaans, meaning
Italian), is the usual pronunciation. • The sequence in words such as
mens (meaning "human") is realized as . • The sequence in words such as
guns (meaning "favour") is realised more often as than as . For speakers with the merger, these transcriptions are to be read as and , respectively. • The sequence in words such as
spons (meaning "sponge") is realised as . analyze the pre- sequences as
phonemic short vowels and note that this process of nasalising the vowel and deleting the nasal occurs in many dialects of Dutch as well, such as
The Hague dialect.
Diphthongs ======== • According to , the first elements of are close-mid, more narrowly transcribed or . According to , the onsets of are near-close . For simplicity, both variants will be written simply as . are commonly used for centralized close-mid vowels anyway - see
near-close near-front unrounded vowel and
near-close near-back rounded vowel. • Some sources prescribe monophthongal realizations of these; that is at least partially outdated: • There is not a complete agreement about the realisation of : • According to , it is realised as either rising or falling , with the former being more common. The unrounded onset is a rather recent development and is not described by older sources. The monophthongal realisation is virtually nonexistent. • According to , it is realised as . Its onset is sometimes unrounded, which can cause it to merge with . • There is not a complete agreement about the realisation of • According to , they may be realised in four ways: • Falling diphthongs. Their first element may be short or somewhat lengthened . • Rising diphthongs . These variants do not seem to appear word-finally. The sequence is commonly realised as or, more often, , with realised as
breathy voice on the diphthong. • Phonetically disyllabic sequences of two short monophthongs , which may occur in all environments. • Monophthongs, either short or somewhat lengthened . The monophthongal realisations occur in less stressed words as well as in stressed syllables in words that have more than one syllable. In the latter case, they are in free variation with all of the three diphthongal realisations. In case of , the monophthongal also appears in unstressed word-final syllables. • According to , they are realized as either or . • also occurs in words spelled with , like
reël 'rule'. Historically, these were pronounced with a disyllabic sequence and so
reël used to be pronounced . • There is not a complete agreement about the dialectal realisation of in the
Boland area: • According to , they are centralized close-mid monophthongs , which do not merge with and . • According to and De Villiers, they are close monophthongs, long according to , short according to De Villiers.
Other diphthongs • The scholar Daan Wissing argues that is not a phonetically correct transcription and that is more accurate. In his analysis, he found that makes for 65% of the realisations, the other 35% being monophthongal, , and . • Most often, has an unrounded offset. For some speakers, the onset is also unrounded. That can cause to merge with , which is considered non-standard. • occur mainly in loanwords. • Older sources describe as a narrow back diphthong . However, newer sources describe its onset as more front. For example, , states that the onset of is central . • In some words which, in English, are pronounced with , the Afrikaans equivalent tends to be pronounced with , rather than . That happens because Afrikaans is more similar to the usual South African realization of English .
Long diphthongs The long diphthongs, also known as 'double vowels', are phonemically sequences of a free vowel and a non-syllabic equivalent of or : . Although both /iu/ and /eu/ are typically pronounced as [iu], they are spelled differently; the former as ⟨ieu⟩, and the latter as ⟨eeu⟩.
'False' diphthongs In diminutives ending in formed to monosyllabic nouns, the vowels are realised as closing diphthongs . In the same environment, the sequences are realized as , i.e. as closing diphthongs followed by palatal nasal. • The suffixes and (phonemically and , respectively) and the diminutive suffix are realised as (with a monophthong), rather than . • In practice, the diphthong is realised the same as the phonemic diphthong . • , when it has arisen from diphthongisation of , differs from the phonemic diphthong by having a slightly different onset, although the exact nature of that difference is unclear. This means that
puntjie 'point' sounds somewhat different than
puintjie 'rubble'. ==Consonants==