1 Answers
The phonemic inventory of Maldivian consists of 29 consonants and 10 vowels. Like other modern Indo-Aryan languages the Maldivian phonemic inventory shows an opposition of long and short vowels, of dental and retroflex consonants as well as single and geminate consonants.
Dental and retroflex stops are contrastive in Maldivian. For example: maḍun means ‘quietly’ madun means ‘seldom’. The segments /t/ and /d/ are articulated just behind the front teeth. The Maldivian segments /ʈ/, /ɖ/, /ʂ/, and /ɭ/ are not truly retroflex, but apical, produced at the very rear part of the alveolar ridge.
Maldivian has the prenasalized stops /ᵐb/, /ⁿd/, /ᶯɖ/, and /ᵑɡ/. These segments occur only intervocalically: /haⁿdu/ /haᶯɖuː/ and /aᵑɡa/. Maldivian and Sinhalese are the only Indo-Aryan languages that have prenasalized stops.
The influence of other languages has played a great role in Maldivian phonology. For example, the phoneme /z/ comes entirely from foreign influence: /ɡaːziː/ is from Persian, /maːziː/ is from Urdu.