Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: /ɑ/, /ɛ/, /i/, /ɔ/, and /u/. They are very similar to the vowels of Spanish and Italian, though /u/ stands between /u/ and /o/ in those languages. Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
/ɑ/ is pronounced like the "a" in father
/ɛ/ is pronounced like the "e" in bed
/i/ is pronounced like the "i" in ski
/ɔ/ is pronounced like the first part of the "o" in American English home, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
/u/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in rote.
Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui is pronounced /tʃu.i/, with hiatus.
Semivowels
Standard Swahili has also two semivowels, y (/j/) and w (/w/). They are used to make diphthongs, as in the passive form of verbs (kupendwa, to be loved, from kupenda, to love). Other examples can be mpya, new, pronounced m-pya, and mbwa, dog, pronounced m-bwa.
Consonants
Bilabial
Labio-
dental
Dental
Alveolar
Post-
alveolar
Palatal
Velar
Glottal
Nasal stop
m/m/
n/n/
ny/ɲ/
ng’/ŋ/
Prenasalized stop
mb/mb/
nd/nd/
nj/ɲɟ/
ng/ŋɡ/
Implosive stop
b/ɓ/
d/ɗ/
j/ʄ/
g/ɠ/
Tenuis stop
p/p/
t/t/
ch/tʃ/
k/k/
Aspirated stop
p/pʰ/
t/tʰ/
ch/tʃʰ/
k/kʰ/
Prenasalized fricative
mv/ɱv/
nz/nz/
Voiced fricative
v/v/
(dh/ð/)
z/z/
(gh/ɣ/)
Voiceless fricative
f/f/
(th/θ/)
s/s/
sh/ʃ/
(kh/x/)
h/h/
Trill
r/r/
Lateral approximant
l/l/
Approximant
y/j/
w/w/
Notes:
The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto [m.to.to] "child", nilimpiga [ni.li.m.pi.ɠa] "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa [m.bwa] "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, [ndi.zi], as does nenda [ne.nda] (not *[nen.da]) "go".
The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as [s z h r], respectively.
Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo [tembo] "palm wine", but tembo [tʰembo] "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common.
Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers, and are often both realized as /ɺ/
Introduction
