Phonology
Burushaski primarily has five vowels, /i e a o u/. Various contractions result in long vowels; stressed vowels (marked with acute accents in Berger's transcription) tend to be longer and less "open" than unstressed ones ( as opposed to ). Long vowels also occur in loans and in a few onomatopoeic words (Grune 1998). All vowels have nasal counterparts in Hunza (in some expressive words) and in Nager (also in proper names and a few other words).
Berger (1998) finds the following consonants to be phonemic, shown below in his transcription and in the IPA:
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolo- palatal |
Retroflex | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m /m/ | n /n/ | ṅ /ŋ/ | |||||
| Plosive | ph /pʰ/ | th /tʰ/ | ṭh /ʈʰ/ | kh /kʰ/ | qh /qʰ/ | |||
| p /p/ | t /t/ | ṭ /ʈ/ | k /k/ | q /q/ | ||||
| b /b/ | d /d/ | ḍ /ɖ/ | g /ɡ/ | |||||
| Affricate | ch /t͡sʰ/ | ćh /t͡ɕʰ/ | c̣h /ʈ͡ʂʰ/ | |||||
| c /t͡s/ | ć /t͡ɕ/ | c̣ /ʈ͡ʂ/ | ||||||
| j /d͡ʑ/ | j̣ /ɖ͡ʐ/ | |||||||
| Fricative | s /s/ | ś /ɕ/ | ṣ /ʂ/ | h /h/ | ||||
| z /z/ | ġ /ʁ/ | |||||||
| Trill | r /r/ | |||||||
| Approximant | l /l/ | y | ỵ /ɻ/ | w | ||||
Notes:
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