Consonants The glottal stop is not part of the orthography but appears frequently in 's survey data, typically word-initially and word-finally. 's orthography guide describes as '
alveo-palatal occlusives', using the phonetic transcriptions , but states as sounding like to French speakers. It is therefore unclear if the transcriptions are truly phonetic or if they are being used more loosely and are actually referring to the postalveolar
affricates , which have sometimes been transcribed with in IPA illustrations and may also be described as 'alveo-palatal occlusives', though ambiguous. The author's original transcriptions are used in the chart above. Similarly, Malo explicitly states is not a fricative as it is in French, but it is unclear if it refers to or . 's survey data includes multiple examples of with occasional realization as (depending on the dialect) as well as examples of (which are acoustically similar to ), and no examples of affricates, suggesting that they may truly be (alveo-)palatal plosives.
Vowels All vowels have nasalized forms and are written with the typical tilde above. In some dialects, the nasal vowels may be realized as or . The mid central vowel appears in a small subset of 's survey data as a realization of .
Labialization of consonants is written with the close back rounded vowels , rather than typical . The close front unrounded vowel may be realized as
palatalization on the preceding consonants.
Tones There are two phonemic tones, high and low , as well as a lexically contrastive but non-phonemic
downstepped high tone . The low tone is written with the grave accent (as in IPA), the downstepped high tone is written with the acute accent , and the plain high tone is
unmarked. 's survey data also shows phonetic possibility of mid and falling tones. == Orthography ==