Maldivian phonology
The phonemic inventory of Maldivian consists of 29 consonants and 10 vowels. Like other modern Indo-Aryan languages the Maldivian phonemic inventory shows an opposition of long and short vowels, of dental and retroflex consonants as well as single and geminate consonants.
Vowels
- The short open back vowel is phonetically central.
- Diphthongs,, and become,, and in Malé. However, this does not apply to unassimilated loanwords.
Consonants
Dental and retroflex stops are contrastive in Maldivian. For example: means ‘quietly’, means ‘seldom’. The segments and are articulated just behind the front teeth. The Maldivian segments,,, and are not truly retroflex, but apical, produced at the very rear part of the alveolar ridge.Maldivian has the prenasalized stops,,, and. These segments occur only intervocalically: and . Maldivian and Sinhalese are the only Indo-Aryan languages that have prenasalized stops.
The influence of other languages has played a great role in Maldivian phonology. For example, the phoneme comes entirely from foreign influence: is from Persian, is from Urdu.
The phoneme also occurs only in borrowed words in Modern Standard Maldivian: . At one point, Maldivian did not have the phoneme, and occurred in the language without contrastive aspiration. Some time in the 17th century, word initial and intervocalic changed to. Historical documents from the 11th century, for example, show 'five' rendered as whereas today it is pronounced.
In standard Maldivian when the phoneme occurs in the final position of a word it changes to intervocalically when inflected. For example, becomes and becomes . and still contrastive, though: initially and and intervocalically and .
/ʂ/ is peculiar to Dhivehi among Indo-Aryan languages. In some dialects, it is pronounced as a or . The /ʂ/ is related historically and allophonically to /ʈ/. Sometime after the 12th century, the intervocalic /ʈ/ became /raʈu/ 'island', 'island'. The /ʈ/ is retained in geminate clusters like /feʂuni:/ 'started', /faʈʈaifi/ 'has caused to start'. The contrast between /ʂ/ and /ʈ/ was made through loan words like /koʂani:/ 'cutting', /koʈari/ 'room'.
/ʃ/ is a loan phoneme. Although most speakers clearly distinguish between /ʃ/ and /ʂ/, some researchers report that this contrast is diminishing among younger speakers, especially those receiving education in English..
Borrowed phonemes
Modern Standard Maldivian has borrowed many phonemes from Arabic. These phonemes are used exclusively in loan words from Arabic, for example, the phoneme in words such as . However, most Maldivians do not pronounce the sounds exactly. The following table shows the phonemes that have been borrowed from Arabic with their transliteration into Tāna, and their original and native pronunciation.| Tāna | Arabic | SAMT | IPA Original / Dhivehi |
| ޙ | ح | ḥ | / |
| ޚ | خ | x | / |
| ޜ | ژ | ʒ | / |
| ޢ | ع | ‘ | / |
| ޣ | غ | ġ | / or |
| ޥ | و | w | / |
| ޛ | ذ | ź | / |
| ޠ | ط | ţ | / |
| ޡ | ظ | ẓ | / or |
| ޘ | ث | ṡ | / |
| ޤ | ق | q | / |
| ޞ | ص | ş | / |
| ޟ | ض | ḑ | / |
| ޝ | ش | ś | / or |