Vowels Zaghawa has a nine-vowel system with
advanced-tongue-root vowel harmony. The vowels fall into two sets: • • , with the vowels of affixes depending on the set of vowels in the stem, and with /a/ functioning in both sets. There is some variation among dialects as to the presence of a tenth vowel, /ə/, which in some dialects functions as the +ATR counterpart of /a/. Diphthongs are and .
Consonants Consonants are simple: Osman also includes in this list. occurs primarily in the Sudanese dialect as a variant of appearing before . The phonemic status of the
rhotics are unclear: Osman states that may be exchanged without any change in meaning, yet maintains that they are distinct phonemes. Of the
obstruents, may not occur word-initially, and only may occur word-finally, with /b/ in final position in some dialects. may not occur word-initially, and only appear in the middle of words, as in .
Tone There are five
tones,
high, mid, low, rising, falling, all of which may occur on simple vowels, for example in
I watered,
I said,
right (direction). Tone distinguishes words, but also has grammatical functions; for example, the plural of many nouns is formed by changing the tone of the final syllable from low to high, and the perfective aspect of many verbs is similarly formed by changing the tone of the final syllable from low to high.
Syllable structure Words tend to be short, often CV and CVCV. The most complex syllables are CVC and CRV, where
R is either of the two
rhotics. == Orthography ==