PROBLEMS FACED BY MARATHI LANGUAGE LEARNERS
Keywords:
Multiple pronunciations in Marathi, Phonetic Alphabet Table for Marathi language, Marathi Affricates, Diacritical mark, Marathi fricativesAbstract
The Marathi language has multiple pronunciations (allophones) for certain consonants (च, ज, झ and फ) like
most of other languages e.g. Hindi, Urdu, Kashmiri etc. These are the pronunciations which have come from either
Persian or English languages. In Hindi as an influence of Urdu and Arabic languages unlike Marathi, use of nuqta is
observed to differentiate between the two sounds of the same consonants (e.g. ज and )[1]. But in Marathi it is not
possible to determine which pronunciation is to be used without knowing the word or the context as there is no
differentiation made in the script. This pronunciation inconsistency is one of the most prominent difficulties for Marathi
learners. This paper talks about the need of differentiation to be added in the Marathi script to help the Marathi
language learners. We also have given the phonetic alphabets for Marathi language and tried to look at some anomalies
in the literature.
