Somali phonology
This article describes the phonology of the Somali language.
Consonants
Somali has 23 consonants which cover every place of articulation on the IPA chart; though not all of these distinctions are phonemic.is often lenited to in stressed intervocalic positions, as in toban 'ten' and madow 'black'.
is a voiced retroflex stop. Some phoneticians say that it has an implosive quality for some speakers. It is sometimes realized as a flap between vowels.
, a non-native phoneme often found in loanwords, may be pronounced by some speakers; it is normally substituted with.
The voiceless stops are unreleased in coda positions and are aspirated elsewhere.
, the voiced pharyngeal fricative, may have creaky voice.
word initially is
An epenthetic glottal stop is inserted before vowels in word-initial position.
is often pronounced with breathy voice and may be partially devoiced. Between vowels, it may be a single tap.
In some dialects, can be realized as or.
is often realized as in the Somali alluvial-plain dialects. is realized as in word-final positions like qaboo'.
is often voiced to in intervocalic positions.
Tone
Lexical prominence in Somali can be classified under a pitch accent 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, and masculine and feminine genders. One example is inán versus ínan. This reflects a tonal pattern that codes grammatical gender, such as dameér versus daméer.
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 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. 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.
Stress 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 for high tone
- grave accent for low tone
- circumflex for falling tone
Phonotactics
The syllable structure of Somali is V.Root morphemes usually have a mono- or disyllabic 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.
Sandhi
Phonological changes occur at morpheme boundaries for specific grammatical morphemes. There may be assimilation or elision. One unusual change which can occur is to .Coalescence also occurs. This is a kind of external sandhi in which words join, undergoing phonological processes such as elision.