Javanese phonology

The phonemes of Modern Standard Javanese as shown below.

Vowels
In closed syllables the vowels are pronounced  respectively. In open syllables, are also  when the following vowel is  in an open syllable; otherwise they are, or identical. In the standard dialect of Surakarta, is pronounced  in word-final open syllables, and in any open penultimate syllable before such an.

Consonants
The Javanese "voiced" phonemes are not in fact voiced but voiceless, with breathy voice on the following vowel. The relevant distinction in phonation of the plosives is described as stiff voice versus slack voice.

A Javanese syllable can have the following form: CSVC, where C = consonant, S = sonorant (, or any nasal consonant), and V = vowel. As with other Austronesian languages, native Javanese roots consist of two syllables; words consisting of more than three syllables are broken up into groups of disyllabic words for pronunciation. In Modern Javanese, a disyllabic root is of the following type: nCsvVnCsvVC.

Apart from Madurese, Javanese is the only language of Western Indonesia to possess a distinction between dental and retroflex phonemes. The latter sounds are transcribed as "th" and "dh" in the modern Roman script, but previously by the use of an underdot: "" and "". Some scholars take this to be an influence from Sanskrit, but others believe it could be an independent development within the Austronesian super-family.