Afrikaans phonology

Afrikaans has a similar phonology to other West Germanic languages, especially Dutch.

Vowels


Afrikaans has an extensive vowel inventory consisting of 17 vowel phonemes, including 10 monophthongs and 7 diphthongs. There are also 7 marginal 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 $⟨a⟩$ 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 $⟨ûe⟩$ 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 ⟨a⟩, ⟨ɐ⟩ and ⟨ɑ⟩. This article uses ⟨a⟩.
 * has been variously transcribed with ⟨ɑː⟩ and ⟨aː⟩. 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 $⟨ae⟩$ 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.


 * 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 $⟨eë⟩$, 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 $⟨-aad⟩$ and $⟨-aat⟩$ (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'.

Obstruents

 * All obstruents at the ends of words are devoiced so that, for instance, a final is realised as.
 * are bilabial, whereas are labiodental.
 * According to some authors, is actually an approximant.
 * are unaspirated.
 * may be somewhat more front before front vowels; the fronted allophone of also occurs in diminutives ending in -djie and -tjie.
 * occur only in loanwords.
 * is most often uvular, either a fricative, or a voiceless trill, the latter especially in initial position before a stressed vowel.  The uvular fricative is also used by many speakers of white South African English as a realisation of the marginal English phoneme . In Afrikaans, velar  may be used in a few "hyper-posh" varieties  , and it may also, rarely, occur as an allophone before front vowels in speakers with otherwise uvular.
 * occurs mostly in loanwords, but also occurs as an allophone of at the end of an inflected root where G is preceded by a short vowel and  and succeeded by a schwa such as in berg(e) ('mountain', /bæːrχ, ˈbæ(ː)rɡə/).
 * /w/ occurs frequently as an allophone of /v/ after other obstruents, such as in  kwaad  ('angry').

Sonorants

 * is bilabial.
 * merges with before labial consonants. Phonetically, this merged consonant is realized as bilabial  before, and labiodental  before.
 * merges with before dorsals.
 * is velarised in all positions, especially noticeably non-prevocalically.
 * is usually an alveolar trill or tap . In some parts of the former Cape Province, it is realised uvularly, either as a trill  or a fricative . The uvular trill may also be pronounced as a tap.