Page:A Brief Account of Malayalam Phonetics - L V Ramaswami Aiyar.pdf/5

A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF MALAYALAM PHONETICS
BY
L. Viswanātha Rāmaswāmī Aiyar, M.A., B.L.,
Maharaja's College, Ernakulam, Cochin State.

I give below a list of the International Phonetic Association symbols that I have requisitioned for the following concise discussion of the phonetic habits of the Malayalam language. I am fully conscious of the fact that just as no two persons can utter the same sound exactly alike, no two languages also can have exactly similar sounds; yet after a careful examination of the IPA. script, I have attempted in this essay to make as close an adaptation of this script as possible to the sounds of the Malayalam language. The symbols given below represent the sounds occurring in the pronunciation of the people of the Cochin State, which, situated as it is right in the central portion of Malabar or the Malayalam-speaking land, has in a great degree preserved the true Malayalam sounds free from the contamination of the Kaṇṇaḍa or Kanarese influence in the north and of Tamil in the south.

Front Vowels.

 

[i] as in [pʌṭi] step, [mʌṭi] lap, laziness.

[i:] as in [ti:] fire.

[e] and [e:] as in [c͡ʃeṭi] plant and [pe:ṭi] fear.

[ɛ] not an ordinary sound in Malayalam, but occurs dialectally in words like [kɛʃəm] hair, [tɛn] honey.

[æ] as in [ɲæˑn] I, [ɲjæjəm] justice.

 

Mixed Vowels.

 

[ʌ]: this is the real sound of the first symbol of the Malayalam alphabet, which, however, retains its purity of sound only in stressed syllables of words, as in [mʌrʌm] tree; [ʌmma] mother.

[a]: properly speaking, this sound should be considered a variety of the [ʌ] phoneme, for this is the sound of the Malayalam symbol