Language/Warlpiri/Pronunciation/Alphabet-and-Pronunciation
Warlpiri is part of the Yapa/Ngarrkic group of Pama-Nyungan languages.
Warlpiri is written with the Latin alphabet without any diacritical marks. A spelling system for the language was first devised by Lothar Jagst during the 1950s and has been revised slightly since then.
Warlpiri has a relatively simple sound system an inventory of 21 phonemes. Consonant clusters are restricted.
Vowels[edit | edit source]
Warlpiri has three vowels. Vowels can long long or short. Vowel length makes a difference in word meaning, e.g., mirnta ‘flu’ and miirnta ‘hardwood shield’. There is progressive and a regressive vowel harmony, i.e., assimilation of the first vowel to the following vowel and vice versa, e.g., karli ‘boomerang’ + –ngku‘ergative’ becomes karlingki;
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Open | a |
Consonants[edit | edit source]
Warlpiri has 18 consonant phonemes. They are given below with their orthographic representations indicated in parentheses. There are several distinguishing features of Warlpiri consonants:
- no voiced stops
- no fricatives or affricates
- nasal consonants at each point of articulation
- three lateral sounds
- three rhotic (r-like) sounds
| Peripheral | Laminal | Apical | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial | Velar | Palatal | Alveolar | Retroflex | |
| Plosive | p /p/~[b] | k /k/~[g] | j /c/~[ɟ] | t /t/~[d] | rt /ʈ/~[ɖ] |
| Nasal | m /m/ | ng /ŋ/ | ny /ɲ/ | n /n/ | rn /ɳ/ |
| Trill | rr /r/ | ||||
| Flap | rd /ɽ/ [ɻ͡ɾ] | ||||
| Lateral | ly /ʎ/ | l /l/ | rl /ɭ/ | ||
| Approximant | w /w/ | y /j/ | r /ɻ/ | ||
As shown in the chart, Warlpiri distinguishes five positions of articulation and has oral and nasal stops at each position. The oral stops have no phonemic voice distinction, but they display voiced and unvoiced
- /ʈ, ɳ, ɭ, ɽ/ are retroflex consonants with no equivalents in English
- /ɲ/ = first n in canyon
- /ŋ/ = ng in song
- /ʎ/ first lli in million
- /j/ = y in yet
Stress[edit | edit source]
Stress normally falls on the first syllable of Warlpiri words, including enclitics.
Vowel harmony[edit | edit source]
If two adjacent syllables in a Warlpiri morpheme have high vowels, those high vowels are almost always alike: both u or both i. The number of Warlpiri roots with adjacent syllables having u and i is very small. Both progressive and regressive vowel harmony occur. In progressive vowel harmony, the second vowel changes to match the first; in regressive harmony, the first changes to match the second.