Acehnese phonology
The phonology of Acehnese varies between dialects and can cause difficulties in communication. This article mainly focuses on the Peusangan dialect, which is considered to be the standard variety of Acehnese, other dialects will be explicitly mentioned.
Consonants
The table below shows the Acehnese consonant phonemes and the range of their realizations, non-standard phonemes are shown in brackets.Clusters
Acehnese has three consonant glides: /h/, /r/, and /l/.Vowels
Native-speaking linguists divide vowels in Acehnese into several categories: oral monophthongs, oral diphthongs, nasal monophthongs, and nasal diphthongs.Oral vowels
Oral monophthong vowels in Acehnese are shown in the table below.Oral diphthong vowels ending with /ə/ are shown in the table below.
| Front | Central | Back |
| /iə/ | /ɯə/ | /uə/ |
| /ɛə/ | /ʌə/ | /ɔə/ |
Oral diphthong vowels ending with /i/ are shown in the table below.
Nasal vowels
Nasal monophthong vowels in Acehnese are shown in the table below.Orthography
The orthography of Achenese features 31 letters: the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet, è, é, ë, ô, and ö.| Grapheme | Phoneme | Open syllable | Closed syllable |
| a | /a/ | ba /ba/ ‘carry’ | bak /baʔ/ ‘at, tree’ |
| e | /ə/ | le /lə/ ‘many’ | let /lət/ ‘pull out’ |
| é | /e/ | baté /bate/ ‘cup, betel tray’ | baték /bateʔ/ ‘batik’ |
| è | /ɛ/ | bèe /bɛə/ ‘smell’ | bèk /bɛʔ/ ‘prohibitive "don't" ' |
| eu | /ɯ/ | keu /kɯ/ ‘for’ | keuh /kɯh/ ‘so, pronominal affix for second person ’ |
| i | /i/ | di /di/ 'in, from' | dit /dit/ 'few, small amount' |
| o | /ɔ/ | yo /jɔ/ ‘afraid’ | yok /jɔʔ/ ‘shake’ |
| ô | /o/ | rô /ro/ ‘spill’ | rôh /roh/ ‘enter’ |
| ö | /ʌ/ | pö /pʌ/ ‘fly’ | pöt /pʌt/ ‘pluck, pick’ |
| u | /u/ | su /su/ ‘sound, voice’ | cut /cut/ ‘small’ |