Hindustani phonology

Hindustani natively possesses a symmetrical ten-vowel system. The vowels are always short in length, while the vowels , , , , , , are usually considered long, in addition to an eleventh vowel which is found in English loanwords. The distinction between short and long vowels is often described as tenseness, with short vowels being lax, and long vowels being tense. Vowels are somewhat longer before voiced stops than before voiceless stops. It is subject to schwa deletion word-medially in certain contexts. Vowel The open central vowel is transcribed in IPA by either or . In Urdu, there is further short (spelled , as in kamra ) in word-final position, which contrasts with (spelled , as in laṛkā ). This contrast is often not realized by Urdu speakers, and always neutralized in Hindi (where both sounds uniformly correspond to ). Vowels , , Among the close vowels, what in Sanskrit are thought to have been primarily distinctions of vowel length (that is and ), have become in Hindustani distinctions of quality, or length accompanied by quality (that is, and ). The opposition of length in the close vowels has been neutralized in word-final position, only allowing long close vowels in final position. As a result, Sanskrit loans which originally have a short close vowel are realized with a long close vowel, e.g. ( – 'energy') and ( – 'item') are and , not * and *. Vowels , The vowel represented graphically as – (romanized as ) has been variously transcribed as or . Among sources for this article, , pictured to the right, uses , while and use . Furthermore, an eleventh vowel is found in English loanwords, such as ('bat'). Hereafter, – (romanized as ) will be represented as to distinguish it from , the latter. In addition, occurs as a conditioned allophone of (schwa) within the sequence ( before the next syllable or word-finally due to schwa deletion). supports this last view. Vowel orthography with diacritics and English approximations The principal vowel phonemes may be organised as follows to demonstrate the orthographic conventions for vowels. ==Consonants==

Hindustani has a core set of 28 consonants inherited from earlier Indo-Aryan. Supplementing these are two consonants that are internal developments in specific word-medial contexts, and seven consonants originally found in loan words, whose expression is dependent on factors such as status (class, education, etc.) and cultural register (Modern Standard Hindi vs Urdu). Most native consonants may occur geminate (doubled in length; exceptions are ). Geminate consonants are always medial and preceded by one of the interior vowels (that is, , , or ). They all occur monomorphemically except , which occurs only in a few Sanskrit loans where a morpheme boundary could be posited in between, e.g. for ('without shame').⟨The sound is lateral in Dravidian languages, see the Voiced retroflex lateral flap⟩ • , , and are post-velar. • , , , and are mostly replaced by , , , and respectively in Hindi, except in the careful speech of educated speakers. is found in Urdu and is rarer in Hindi, often being replaced with (or further by ) in the latter; an example of a word containing this sound is ( – 'dragon'). • /ŋ/ mostly only occurs in clusters before velars as in aṅkit but there are also words like tinkā, ākramaṇkārī, mumkin making it phonemic. Sanskritic loans with ṅ occurring elsewhere is made ṅg as in Sanskrit vāṅmaya being pronounced /ʋaːŋ(ɡ)mɛː/. Stops in final position are not released, although they continue to maintain the four-way phonation distinction in final position. varies freely with , and can also be pronounced . is usually flapped or trilled. In intervocalic position, it may have a single contact and be described as a flap , but it may also be a clear trill, especially in word-initial and syllable-final positions, and geminate is always a trill in Arabic and Persian loanwords, e.g. ( – 'little') versus well-trilled ( – 'particle'). In some Indo-Aryan languages, the plosives and the flaps are allophones in complementary distribution, with the former occurring in initial, geminate and postnasal positions and the latter occurring in intervocalic and final positions. However, in Standard Hindi they contrast in similar positions, as in ( – 'bird') vs ( – 'fearless'). Allophony of and Hindustani does not distinguish between and , specifically Hindi. These are distinct phonemes in English, but conditional allophones of the phoneme in Hindustani (written in Hindi or in Urdu), meaning that contextual rules determine when it is pronounced as and when it is pronounced as . is pronounced in onglide position, i.e. between an onset consonant and a following vowel, as in ( , 'island'), and elsewhere, as in ( , 'vow'). Native Hindi speakers are usually unaware of the allophonic distinctions, though these are apparent to native English speakers. When is preceded by a consonant which itself is preceded by a vowel (i.e. in the environment VC_), the allophony is non-conditional, i.e. the speaker can choose , , or an intermediate sound based on personal habit and preference, and still be perfectly intelligible. This is due to ambiguity in the syllabification of such words. For example, advait ( ) which is underlyingly , may be syllabified as , , or . Accordingly, the word can be pronounced equally correctly as , , or . Among these, , also found in English and Portuguese loanwords, are now considered well-established in Hindi; indeed, appears to be encroaching upon and replacing even in native (non-Persian, non-English, non-Portuguese) Hindi words as well as many other Indian languages such as Bengali, Gujarati and Marathi, as happened in Greek with phi. While [z] is a foreign sound, it is also natively found as an allophone of /s/ beside voiced consonants, eg, rasgullā, nasbandī. Similarly v can get devoiced before voiceless consonants, eg. bevkūf. The other three Persian loans, , are still considered to fall under the domain of Urdu, and are also used by some Hindi speakers; however, other Hindi speakers may assimilate these sounds to respectively. The sibilant is found in loanwords from all sources (Arabic, English, Portuguese, Persian, Sanskrit) and is well-established. In contrast, for native speakers of Urdu, the maintenance of is not commensurate with education and sophistication, but is characteristic of all social levels. lists distinctively Sanskrit/Hindi biconsonantal clusters of initial and final , and distinctively Perso-Arabic/Urdu biconsonantal clusters of final . ==Suprasegmental features==

Hindustani has a stress accent, but it is not as important as in English. To predict stress placement, the concept of syllable weight is needed: • A light syllable (one mora) ends in a short vowel : V • A heavy syllable (two moras) ends in a long vowel or in a short vowel and a consonant: VV, VC • An extra-heavy syllable (three moras) ends in a long vowel and a consonant, or a short vowel and two consonants: VVC, VCC Stress is on the heaviest syllable of the word, and in the event of a tie, on the last such syllable. If all syllables are light, the penultimate is stressed. However, the final mora of the word is ignored when making this assignment (Hussein 1997) [or, equivalently, the final syllable is stressed either if it is extra-heavy, and there is no other extra-heavy syllable in the word or if it is heavy, and there is no other heavy or extra-heavy syllable in the word]. For example, with the ignored mora in parentheses: Content words in Hindustani normally begin on a low pitch, followed by a rise in pitch. Strictly speaking, Hindustani, like most other Indian languages, is rather a syllable-timed language. The schwa has a strong tendency to vanish into nothing (syncopated) if its syllable is unaccented. ==See also==