Afrikaans phonology

Afrikaans has a similar phonology or pronunciation to other West Germanic languages, especially Dutch.

Vowels
Afrikaans has an extensive vowel inventory consisting of 17 monophthong phonemes (including 7 marginal ones) and 7 diphthong phonemes.

Close

 * As phonemes, and  occur only in the words spieël  'mirror' and koeël  'bullet', which used to be pronounced with sequences  and, respectively. In other cases, they occur as allophones of  and  before.
 * (phonetically ) are higher than the unstressed allophone of  and .  transcribes them as, but this article uses  for simplicity. Many scholars transcribe them as.
 * occurs only in the word wîe 'wedges'.
 * tends to be merged with into.
 * is lengthened to before.
 * is weakly rounded, and could be more narrowly transcribed as or . For this reason, it is sometimes transcribed.

Mid

 * contrasts with only in the minimal pair pers  'press' – pers  'purple'.
 * Before the sequences, the and  contrasts are neutralized in favour of the long variants  and , respectively.
 * The schwa occurs as an allophone of unstressed  and . In some words, such as vanaand  'this morning',  is also realized as schwa.
 * Many speakers merge with  into.
 * occur only in a few words.

Open

 * As a phoneme, occurs only in some loanwords from English, such as pêl  'pal', as well as in some words such as vertrek  'departure'. It also occurs as a dialectal allophone of  before, most commonly in the former Transvaal and Free State provinces.
 * As a phoneme, occurs only in some loanwords from English (such as grênd  'grand'), as well as before  in some words. It also occurs as an allophone of  before  and the sequences.
 * are sometimes transcribed with simpler symbols, but the former set of symbols is phonetically correct.
 * In the former Transvaal province, is realized as rounded . In extreme cases, this sound may be as high as.
 * In some words, such as hamer, short is in free variation with long, despite the fact that the spelling suggests the latter vowel. In some words, such as laat, the pronunciation with short  occurs only in the colloquial language. In some other words, such as aambeeld  'anvil', the pronunciation with short  is already a part of the standard language.

Nasalized vowels
In some instances of the sequence (where $\langleV\rangle$ stands for 'vowel'),  is realized as nasalization (and lengthening, if the vowel is short) of the preceding vowel. This nasalization is stronger in some speakers than others, but there also are speakers that retain the and keep the original length of the preceding vowel.
 * The sequence in words such as dans is realized as . In monosyllabic words, this realization is the norm.
 * The sequence in more common words (such as Afrikaans) is realized as either  or . In less common words (such as Italiaans)  is the usual pronunciation.
 * The sequence in words such as mens is realized as.
 * The sequence in words such as guns is more often realized as  than . For speakers with the  merger, these transcriptions are to be read as  and, respectively.
 * The sequence in words such as spons is realized as.

analyze the pre- sequences as phonemic short vowels.

Diphthongs

 * The scholar Daan Wissing argues that is not a phonetically correct transcription, and that  is more accurate. In his analysis, he found that  makes for 65% of the realizations, while the other 35% of realizations were monophthongal, namely,  and.
 * may be realized in four ways:
 * Falling diphthongs . Sometimes the first element is somewhat lengthened:.
 * Rising diphthongs . These variants don't seem to appear word-finally. The sequence is commonly realized as  or, more often, with  realized as breathy voice on the diphthong.
 * Indeterminate diphthongs, which may occur in all environments.
 * Monophthongs, either short or somewhat lengthened . The monophthongal realizations occur in less stressed words, as well as in stressed syllables in words that have more than one syllable. In the latter case, they are in free variation with all of the three diphthongal realizations. In case of, the monophthongal  also appears in unstressed word-final syllables.
 * The diphthongal realizations may have a close onset:.
 * There is not a complete agreement about the dialectal realization of in the Boland area:
 * According to and De Villiers, they are close monophthongs, long  according to, short  according to De Villiers.
 * According to, they are centralized close-mid monophthongs , which do not merge with and.
 * There is not a complete agreement about the realization of in standard language:
 * According to, it is realized as . Its onset is sometimes unrounded, which can cause it to merge with.
 * According to, is realized as either rising  or falling , with the former realization being the most common. The monophthongal realization  is very rare or doesn't occur at all.
 * Most often, has an unrounded offset. For some speakers, the onset is also unrounded. That can cause  to merge with, which is considered non-standard.
 * occur mainly in loanwords.

Long diphthongs
The long diphthongs (or 'double vowels') are phonemically sequences of a free vowel and a non-syllabic equivalent of or. They are. tends to merge with, but they are always spelled differently: the former as $\langleeeu\rangle$, the latter as $\langleieu\rangle$.

'False' diphthongs
In diminutives of monosyllabic nouns ending in, the vowels (but not when  is followed by ) are realized as closing diphthongs. In the same environment, the sequences are realized as, i.e. as closing diphthongs followed by palatal nasal. Note that the diphthong in practice is realized the same as the phonemic diphthong.

Obstruents

 * All obstruents at the ends of words are devoiced (a final becomes ).
 * are unaspirated.
 * According to some authors, is actually an approximant.
 * may be somewhat more front before front vowels; the fronted allophone of also occurs in diminutives ending in -djie and -tjie.
 * occur only in loanwords.
 * is most often uvular, either a fricative, or a voiceless trill  - the latter especially in initial position before a stressed vowel.  Many speakers of White South African English realize the marginal English phoneme  as uvular . In Afrikaans, velar  may be used in a few "hyper-posh" varieties, and it may also rarely occur as an allophone before front vowels in speakers with otherwise uvular.
 * is realized as a voiced velar stop in some environments.

Sonorants

 * and assimilate their articulation to a following obstruent in many cases:
 * Both become before, and  before.
 * merges into before dorsals . It is realized as velar  before  and the  allophone of, and as uvular  before.
 * is velarized in all positions. This is especially noticeable non-prevocalically.
 * is most commonly realized as the alveolar trill, but voiced uvular fricative and the uvular trill  may occur instead in some southern dialects. Trilled versions may be pronounced with single contact: ,.