Hindustani is the lingua franca of northern India and Pakistan, and through its two standardized registers, Hindi and Urdu, a co-official language of India and co-official and national language of Pakistan respectively. Phonological differences between the two standards are minimal.
Vowels
+ Hindustani vowel phonemes Front CentralBackshort long shortlong Close Close-mid Open-mid Open() Hindustani natively possesses a symmetrical ten-vowel system. The vowels are always short in length, while the vowels , , , , , , are usually considered long, in addition to an eleventh vowel which is found in English loanwords. The distinction between short and long vowels is often described as tenseness, with short vowels being lax, and long vowels being tense. Vowels are somewhat longer before voiced stops than before voiceless stops. Additionally, and occur as conditional allophones of .
Vowel
is often realized more open than mid , i.e. as near-open . It is subject to schwa deletion word-medially in certain contexts.
Vowel
The open central vowel is transcribed in IPA by either or .
In Urdu, there is further short (spelled , as in ) in word-final position, which contrasts with (spelled , as in ). This contrast is often not realized by Urdu speakers, and always neutralized in Hindi (where both sounds uniformly correspond to ).
Vowels , ,
Among the close vowels, what in Sanskrit are thought to have been primarily distinctions of vowel length (that is and ), have become in Hindustani distinctions of quality, or length accompanied by quality (that is, and ). The opposition of length in the close vowels has been neutralized in word-final position, only allowing long close vowels in final position. As a result, Sanskrit loans which originally have a short close vowel are realized with a long close vowel, e.g. ( – 'energy') and ( – 'item') are and , usually not * and *.
Vowels ,
The vowel represented graphically as – (romanized as ) has been variously transcribed as or . Among sources for this article, , pictured to the right, uses , while and use . Furthermore, an eleventh vowel is found in English loanwords, such as ('bat'). Hereafter, – (romanized as ) will be represented as to distinguish it from (which uses ), the latter.
In addition, occurs as a conditioned allophone of (schwa) within the sequence ( before the next syllable or word-finally due to schwa deletion). This change is part of the prestige dialect of Delhi and Western Hindi languages, though it does not occur for every speaker (nor for those of Eastern Hindi languages). Here are some examples of this process:
Hindi/Urdu Transliteration Phonemic Phonetic / "to say" kahnā / "city" śahar / "to wait" ṭhaharnā
However, the fronting of schwa does not occur in words with a schwa only on one side of the such as ( – 'a story') or ( – 'outside').
Vowels ,
The vowel occurs in proximity to if the is surrounded on one of the sides by a schwa and on other side by a round vowel (due to Hindustani phonotactics, this generally only occurs in the sequences or , and that too in the prestigious dialect of Delhi and Western Hindi languages; though it does not occur for every speaker, nor for those of Eastern Hindi languages). It differs from the vowel in that it is a short vowel. For example, in the is surrounded on one side by a schwa and a round vowel on the other side. One or both of the vowels will become , giving the pronunciation .
Nasalisation of vowels
As in French and Portuguese, there are nasalised vowels in Hindustani. There is disagreement over the issue of the nature of nasalisation (barring English-loaned which is seldom nasalised). presents four differing viewpoints:
there are no and , possibly because of the effect of nasalization on vowel quality; there is phonemic nasalization of all vowels; all vowel nasalization is predictable (i.e. allophonic); Nasalized long vowel phonemes () occur word-finally and before voiceless stops; instances of nasalized short vowels () and of nasalized long vowels before voiced stops (the latter, presumably because of a deleted nasal consonant) are allophonic.
Masica supports this last view.
Vowel orthography with diacritics and English approximations
The principal vowel phonemes may be organised as follows to demonstrate the orthographic conventions for vowels.
VowelsIPAHindiISO 15919UrduDiacritics in Urdu are normally not written and usually implied and interpreted based on the context of the sentenceApproximate EnglishequivalentInitialCombiningFinalMedialInitial अ Hindi does not have a diacritic to represent as it is the inherent vowel of the Devanagari script. However, there does exist a diacritic, ्, for suppressing , though it is not often used or needed in modern Hindi orthography. a about आा ā far इि i still ईी ī fee उु u book ऊू ū moon एे ē mate ऐै ai fairy ओो ō force औौ au lot (Received Pronunciation) Hindi has individual letters for each of the aspirated consonants, whereas Urdu has a specific letter to represent aspiration after any consonanth aspiration of the preceding consonant, as in cake As this is a diacritic affecting the preceding vowel, it cannot be the initial character of a word.ँ m̐ In Urdu, the initial form (letter) for representing a nasalised word is: ن٘ (nūn + small nūn ġuṇnā diacritic) heavy nasalisation of the preceding vowel, like can't in rapid General American English As this symbol can represent any nasal consonant phoneme depending on which consonant it is followed by, the particular IPA character used to represent this sound depends on the context. This character does not have an initial form and is not used for initial nasals in Hindiं ṁ homorganic nasal before the succeeding consonant, like jungle or branch, and light vowel nasalisation
Consonants
Hindustani has a core set of 28 consonants inherited from earlier Indo-Aryan ancestors. Supplementing these are two consonants that are internal developments in specific word-medial contexts, and seven consonants originally found in loan words, whose expression is dependent on factors such as status (class, education, etc.) and cultural register (Hindi vs Urdu).
Most native consonants may occur geminate (doubled in length; exceptions are ). Geminate consonants are always medial and preceded by one of the short vowels (that is, , or ). They all occur monomorphemically except , which occurs only in a few Sanskrit loans where a morpheme boundary could be posited in between, e.g. for ('without shame').
For the English speaker, a notable feature of the Hindustani consonants is that there is a four-way distinction of phonation among plosives, rather than the two-way distinction found in English. The phonations are:
tenuis, as , which is like in English spin voiced, as , which is like in English bin aspirated, as , which is like in English pin, and murmured, as .
The last is commonly called "voiced aspirate", though notes that, Evidence from experimental phonetics, however, has demonstrated that the two types of sounds involve two distinct types of voicing and release mechanisms. The series of so-called voice aspirates should now properly be considered to involve the voicing mechanism of murmur, in which the air flow passes through an aperture between the arytenoid cartilages, as opposed to passing between the ligamental vocal bands. The murmured consonants are believed to be a reflex of murmured consonants in Proto-Indo-European, a phonation that is absent in all branches of the Indo-European family except Indo-Aryan and Armenian.
+ Hindustani consonant phonemes Labial Dental/Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal Nasal ⠀ ⠀ ()¹⠀()⁴⠀ ⠀ Stop/Affricate voiceless ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ()²⠀ voiced ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ voiceless aspirated ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ voiced aspirated ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀Rhoticunaspirated⠀⠀aspirated⠀ Fricative voiceless ()²⠀ ⠀ ()¹⠀ ()³⠀ ()²⠀ voiced ()²⠀ ()²⠀ ()²⠀ Approximant ⠀ ⠀ Notes ¹Only present in Sanskrit loanwords, predominant in Hindi (and marginally in Urdu as well). ²Only present in Arabic and Persian loanwords, predominant in Urdu. ³ Post-alveolar is sometimes regarded as a substitution for retroflex in colloquial pronunciation of Hindi. In Urdu (as well as in Hindi), on the other hand, is a phoneme coming from Arabic and Persian loanwords; though this phoneme also does come from Sanskrit tatsamas as well. ⁴A non-standard phoneme only found in a few words, or in a few dialects. Otherwise an allophone of before palatals. Marginal and non-universal phonemes are in parentheses. is lateral for some speakers. ⟨The sound is lateral in Dravidian languages, see the voiced retroflex lateral flap⟩ is mostly (but not always) tends to get de-aspirated to in colloquial western Hindi, though explicitly retained as a distinct phoneme in eastern Hindi. , , and are usually (though not always) perceived post-velar. , , , and are mostly replaced by , , , and respectively in Hindi, except in the careful speech of educated speakers. is found in Urdu and is rarer in Hindi, often being replaced with (or further by , or even in rarer cases) in the latter; an example of a word containing this sound is ( – 'dragon'). /ŋ/ mostly only occurs in clusters before velars as in aṅkit, but there are also words like tinkā, ākramaṇkārī, mumkin, tanqīd making it phonemic. Sanskritic loans with ṅ occurring elsewhere are made ṅg as in Sanskrit vāṅmaya being pronounced /ʋaːŋ(ɡ)mɛː/.
Stops in final position are not released, although they continue to maintain the four-way phonation distinction in final position. varies freely with , and can also be pronounced . is usually flapped or trilled.Nazir Hassan (1980) Urdu phonetic reader, Omkar Nath Koul (1994) Hindi Phonetic Reader, Indian Institute of Language Studies; Foreign Service Institute (1957) Hindi: Basic Course In intervocalic position, it may have a single contact and be described as a flap ,"r is a tip dental trill, and often has but one flap", Thomas Cummings (1915) An Urdu Manual of the Phonetic, Inductive Or Direct Method but it may also be a clear trill, especially in word-initial and syllable-final positions, and geminate is always a trill in Arabic and Persian loanwords, e.g. ( – 'little') versus well-trilled ( – 'particle'). The palatal and velar nasals occur only in consonant clusters, where each nasal is followed by a homorganic stop, as an allophone of a nasal vowel followed by a stop, and in Sanskrit loanwords. However /n/ + velar clusters also occur, eg. /ʊn.kaː/ making /ŋ/ phonemic. There are native murmured sonorants, , eg. nanhā, lhēsnā, kulhāṛī, tumhārā (< ślakṣṇa, ślēṣayati, kuṭhāra, yuṣmē-) there are cases where mbh becomes mh as in sam(b)hālna, also from tatsamas e.g. arhat, but these are considered to be consonant clusters with in the analysis adopted by .
The fricative in Hindustani is typically voiced (as ), especially when surrounded by vowels, but there is no phonemic difference between this voiced fricative and its voiceless counterpart .
Hindustani also has a phonemic difference between the dental plosives and the so-called retroflex plosives. The dental plosives in Hindustani are laminal denti-alveolar (as in Spanish, Portuguese, etc.), and the tongue-tip must be well in contact with the back of the upper front teeth. The retroflex series is not purely retroflex; it actually has an apico-postalveolar (also described as apico-pre-palatal) articulation, and sometimes in words such as ( – 'broken') it even becomes alveolar (especially in Urdu).Tiwari, Bholanath ( 2004) (), Kitāb Mahal, Allahabad, .