My Dinky Note

International Phonetic Association had mapped vowel sounds into a chart as seen below. The y-axis represents the lip opening and the x-axis represents the tongue position.

It can be seen that there are 28 different vowel sounds. However, in Indonesian, we just use 10 of them, including the allophones. Six ‘primary’ vowels in Indonesian are represented as six phonemes: /a/, /e/, /ə/, /i/, /o/, and /u/. The other four are the allophones: [ɛ] (/e/), [ɪ] (/i/), [ɔ] (o), and [ʊ] (u). Therefore, I can summarize the IPA vowels chart become the IPA Indonesian vowels chart as seen below.

Example:

• [a]

akan, dua, makan

• [e]

sore, esok, serong

• [ə]

enam, entah, pergi

• [ɛ]

nenek, bebek, tokek

• [i]

gigi, ini, tali

• [ɪ]

banting, kirim, parit

• [o]

toko, roda, biro

• [ɔ]

tokoh, rokok, pojok

• [u]

upah, tukang, bantu

• [ʊ]

warung, ampun, langsung

Related with my final-year project, using this chart, I can approximate the articulatory position and it can make the optimization process faster.