Sound units in Hindi language

Submitted by- Sandeep kumar Pandey

Roll no-156302006

The sound units present in Hindi language can broadly be classified into two groups- vowels and
consonants. A brief summary alongwith the categorization of sound units according to Manner of
Articulation (MOA) and Place of Articulation (POA) is presented in this report.
Vowels
In speaking, vowels are produced by exciting an essentially fixed vocal tract shape with quasi-periodic
pulses of air caused by the vibration of the vocal cords.the way in which the cross sectional area varies
along the vocal tract determines the resonance frequencies of the tract(the formants) and thereby the
sound that is produced.
There are a total of 10 vowels and 2 dipthongs in hindi language.
Short Vowels:- [a],[i],[u],[e],[o]
Long vowels:- [A],[I],[U],[E],[O]
Dipthongs:-[ai], [au]
Consonants
1. Semi Vowels
Semivowels are vowel-like consonants: that is, the air-flow is not stopped or impeded so as to cause a
friction-sound, but the aperture through which the air passes is smaller than the aperture of any vowel.
Also, in forming words, semivowels appear in positions where consonants normally appear.
[y] [r] [l] [v]
2. Africates
The affricates are the consonants where the production involves combination of stop and fricative
consonant production. Initially, the vocal tract will be completely closed somewhere all the length to
create a total constrictions. After this, the constriction will be partially released to create a fricative
excitations. Most of the Indian languages have |ch|, |chh|, |j| & |jh| as the affricate consonants. All

these affricates are produced at the palatal region. The difference across different affricates is due to
different MOA.
3. Fricatives
The fricatives are the consonants produced by a narrow constriction somewhere along the length of the
vocal tract. The basic difference between fricatives and stop consonants is that the closure will be partial
& narrow in case of fricatives & is complete in case of stop consonants. Depending on the place of
narrow constrictions, we have different fricatives. In case of most Indian languages we have |s|, |sh|,
|shh| & |h| as the fricatives. |s| is a dental fricative, |sh| is an alveolar fricative, |shh| is also an
alveolar fricative but with more stress and |h| is a velar fricative.
4. Nasals
Nasal sounds are similar to vowels having lower formant energy compared to vowels. Nasal sounds are
produced with the help of air flow in nasal cavity. The examples of nasal sound units found in Indian
languages are /ng/, /nj/, /n/, /N/ and /m/ .
5. Stop consonants
Stop consonants form the major category of consonants in Indian languages. During the production of
these consonants the vocal tract is completely closed at some point, somewhere along the length of the
vocal tract and suddenly released. Hence the name stop consonants. The stop consonants are further
classified into different cases based on two criteria, namely, place of articulation (POA) and manner of
articulation(MOA). The POA gives the portion along the length of the vocal tract where it is completely
closed. MOA gives the manner used for exciting the vocal tract synthesis, namely, voicing and aspiration.