Somali phonology
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This article describes the
phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
of the
Somali language Somali (Latin script: ; Wadaad writing, Wadaad: ; Osmanya: 𐒖𐒍 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘 ) is an Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic languages, Cushitic branch. It is spoken as a mother tongue by Somalis in ...
.


Consonants

Common Somali has 23 consonant
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
s. Its consonants cover every
place of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
on the
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...
chart, though not all of these distinctions are
phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
. /b/ is often realized as when in a stressed intervocalic position.Edmondson, J.A., Esling, J.H., & Harris, J.G. (2003). Supraglottal cavity shape, linguistic register, and other phonetic features of Somali. The voiced affricate is missing in many northern and eastern dialects, with the voiceless affricate taking its place. is a
voiced retroflex stop The voiced retroflex plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is d`. Like all the retroflex ...
. Some phoneticians say that it has an
implosive Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants (and possibly also some affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism.''Phonetics for communication disorders.'' Martin J. Ball and Nicole Müller. Ro ...
quality for some speakers. It is sometimes realised as a flap between vowels. The voiceless stops and are always aspirated. , the
voiced pharyngeal fricative The voiced pharyngeal approximant or fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?\. Epiglotta ...
, may have creaky voice. is often pronounced with breathy voice and may be partially devoiced. Between vowels it may be a single tap. can, in some dialects, be pronounced as a . /q/ is sometimes epiglottalized.


Vowels

Somali has five vowel articulations that all contrast
murmured Breathy voice (also called murmured voice, whispery voice, soughing and susurration) is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like ...
and
harsh voice Harsh voice, also called ventricular voice or (in some high-tone registers) pressed voice, is the production of speech sounds (typically vowels) with a constricted laryngeal cavity, which generally involves epiglottal co-articulation. Harsh voic ...
as well as
vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
. There is little change in vowel quality when the vowel is lengthened. Each vowel has a harmonic counterpart, and every vowel within a harmonic group (which notably can be larger than a word in Somali) must harmonize with the other vowels. The Somali orthography, however, does not distinguish between the two harmonic variants of each vowel. There are five diphthongs that also occur in front and back, long and short versions, except for , which does not appear to occur in the back series.


Tone

Lexical prominence in Somali can be classified under a
pitch accent A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ( ...
system, in which there is one high-tone mora per word. The tone system distinguishes both grammatical and lexical differences. Differences include numbers singular and plural (a grammatical distinction), and masculine and feminine genders (a grammatical and sometimes also lexical distinction). One example is ''inán'' ('girl') versus ''ínan'' ('boy'). This reflects a tonal pattern that codes grammatical gender, such as ''dameér'' ('female donkey') versus ''daméer'' ('male donkey'). The question of the tone system in Somali has been debated for decades. The modern consensus is as follows. In Somali, the tone-bearing unit is the
mora Mora may refer to: People * Mora (surname) Places Sweden * Mora, Säter, Sweden * Mora, Sweden, the seat of Mora Municipality * Mora Municipality, Sweden United States * Mora, Louisiana, an unincorporated community * Mora, Minnesota, a city * M ...
rather than the vowel of the syllable. A long vowel or a diphthong consists of two morae and can bear two tones. Each mora is defined as being of high or low tone. Only one high tone occurs per word and this must be on the final or penultimate mora. Particles do not have a high tone. (These include prepositions, clitic pronouns for subject and object, impersonal subject pronouns and focus markers.) There are therefore three possible "accentual patterns" in word roots. Phonetically there are three tones on long vowels: high, low and falling: # On a long vowel or diphthong, a sequence of high-low is realised as a falling tone. # On a long vowel or diphthong, a sequence of low-high is realised as high-high. (Occasionally, it is a rising tone.) This use of tone may be characterized as
pitch accent A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ( ...
. It is similar to that in Oromo.
Stress Stress may refer to: Science and medicine * Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition * Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
is connected with tone. The high tone has strong stress; the falling tone has less stress and the low tone has no stress. When needed, the conventions for marking tone on written Somali are as follows: *
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
- high tone *
grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...
- low tone *
circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
- falling tone Tones on long vowels are marked on the first vowel symbol.


Phonotactics Phonotactics (from Ancient Greek "voice, sound" and "having to do with arranging") is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable struc ...

The syllable structure of Somali is (C)V(C). Root morphemes usually have a mono- or di-syllabic structure. Clusters of two consonants do not occur word-initially or word-finally, i.e., they only occur at syllable boundaries. The following consonants can be geminate: , , , , , , , and . The following cannot be geminate: , and the fricatives. Two vowels cannot occur together at syllable boundaries. Epenthetic consonants, e.g. and , are therefore inserted.


Phonological processes


Allophones

* The voiced stops (, , and ) are devoiced in word-initial and word-final position. Between two vowels they become fricatives. * The voiceless stops and are realised as and in syllable-final position. * is realised as in syllable-final position. * Between vowels, is usually voiced to . * All vowels are nasalised before or after a nasal consonant.


Epenthesis

When a vowel occurs in word-initial position, a glottal stop () is inserted before it.


Sandhi

Phonological changes occur at morpheme boundaries (
sandhi Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
) for specific grammatical morphemes. There may be assimilation or elision. One unusual change which can occur is to .
Coalescence Coalescence may refer to: * Coalescence (chemistry), the process by which two or more separate masses of miscible substances seem to "pull" each other together should they make the slightest contact * Coalescence (computer science), the merging of ...
also occurs. This is a kind of external
sandhi Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
in which words join, undergoing phonological processes such as elision. In Somali it is sometimes obligatory and sometimes it is dependent on the speech style.


Vowel harmony

Roots have front-back
vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...
. There is also a process of vowel harmony in strings longer than a word, known as "harmonic groups".


Prosody

Intonation (as opposed to tone, see above) does not carry grammatical information although it may convey the speaker's attitude or emotion.


References


Bibliography

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Somali Phonology Somali language Afroasiatic phonologies