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.

Somali consonant phonemes

		Bilabial	Coronal	Post- alveolar	Velar	Uvular	Pharyn- geal	Glottal
Nasal		Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme
Plosive	voiceless		Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme		Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme		Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme
	voiced	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme
Affricate				Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme
Fricative	voiceless	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme
	voiced		Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme*				Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme
Trill			Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme
Approximant			Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme	Template:IPAlink Template:Grapheme

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.

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.

Vowels

{{#section-h:Somali language|Vowels}}

Tone

Template:Section unsourced 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 (a grammatical distinction), and masculine and feminine genders (a grammatical and sometimes also lexical distinction). One example is inán ('girl') versus ínan ('boy'). This reflects a tonal pattern that codes grammatical gender, such as dameér ('female donkey') versus daméer ('male donkey').

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. (These include prepositions, clitic pronouns for subject and object, impersonal subject pronouns and focus markers.) There are therefore three possible "accentual patterns" in word roots.

Phonetically there are three tones on long vowels: high, low and falling:

1. On a long vowel or diphthong, a sequence of high-low is realised as a falling tone.
2. On a long vowel or diphthong, a sequence of low-high is realised as high-high. (Occasionally, it is a rising tone.)

This use of tone may be characterized as pitch accent. It is similar to that in Oromo.

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

Template:Section unsourced The syllable structure of Somali is (C)V(C).

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 (sandhi) for specific grammatical morphemes. There may be assimilation or elision. One unusual change which can occur is to (compare Spanish mucho from Latin multus).

Coalescence also occurs. This is a kind of external sandhi in which words join, undergoing phonological processes such as elision.

Vowel harmony

Roots have front-back vowel harmony. There is also a process of vowel harmony in strings longer than a word, known as "harmonic groups".

Prosody

Intonation (as opposed to tone, see above) does not carry grammatical information, although it may convey the speaker's attitude or emotion.

Bibliography

• Template:Cite thesis
• Nilsson, Morgan, and Laura J. Downing. "Somali vowel qualities and vowel harmony domains." In North Atlantic Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL 47), Paris, France, June, pp. 24-26. 2019.