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The Dhurga phoneme inventory and pronunciation key

Vowels

	front		back
high	i/ii		u/uu
low		a/aa

 

Consonants

	Place of articulation
Manner/type of sound	bilabial	dental	alveolar	laminal/palatal	velar
stop	b	dh	d	dj	g
nasal	m	nh	n	nj	ng
lateral			l
rhotic			rr
glides	w		r	y

 

Pronunciation of sounds in Dhurga words

a	as in	but, muffin (short vowel)	baba	father
aa	as in	father, mark (long vowel)	gabaanu	head
b	as in	bee	bilima	turtle
d	as in	dive	duruwa	smoke
dh	as in	d with tip of tongue between teeth or tip of tongue against back of lower teeth	dhadha	elder brother
dj	as in	dew, did’ya	djiraali	blood
g	as in	good	gaagur	hole
i	as in	hit (short vowel)	wiling	lips
ii	as in	heat, bee (long vowel)	dhurliing	elbow
l	as in	louse	djagula	lyrebird
m	as in	mouse	minga	mother
n	as in	nut	bana	rain
ng	as in	sing, singer	ngadjung	water
nh	as in	n with tip of tongue between teeth or tip of tongue against back of lower teeth	nhuruubaba	mud
nj	as in	onion, canion	njurgun	bullrush
rr	as in	trill, like a cat’s purr	nugurr	nose
r	as in	parrot, right	gari	snake
u	as in	put, foot (short vowel)	gugu	shoulder
uu	as in	pool, shoe (long vowel)	dhuula	fishhook
w	as in	water	waadhu	skin
y	as in	young	yandabal	girl

 

Important points to remember

The letter ‘u’ ALWAYS represents the sound as in ‘put’. NEVER does it represent the sound /ah/ as in ‘hut’!

The sound ‘ng’ is always pronounced like the ‘ng’ in ‘singer’. NOT like the ‘ng +g’ as in the word ‘finger’. Notice the difference!

The sound ‘dj’ is like the ‘dy’ sound in ‘dew’, not like the sound in ‘jew’! Same for ‘nj’, it’s NOT pronounced like in ‘munch’, but like the middle sound ‘ny’ in ‘onion’! 

The ‘dh’ sound is NOT like the English ‘th’. Just say ‘d’ with the tip of the tongue against the back of your LOWER teeth, it’s a duller sound than the normal ‘d’.

 

Source: Jutta Besold, Linguist, 2007