Hadza phonology

Hadza syllable structure is limited to CV, or CVN if nasal vowels are analyzed as a coda nasal. Vowel-initial syllables do not occur initially, and medially they appear to be equivalent to /hV/.

Hadza is noted for having medial clicks (clicks within morphemes). This distribution is also found in Sandawe and the Nguni Bantu languages, but not in the Khoisan languages of southern Africa. Some of these words are historically derivable from clicks in initial positions (many appear to reflect lexicalized reduplication, for example, and some are due to prefixes), but others are opaque. As in Sandawe, most medial clicks are glottalized, but not all: puche 'a spleen', tanche 'to aim', tacce 'a belt', minca 'to lick one's lips', laqo 'to trip someone', keqhe-na 'slow', penqhenqhe ~ peqeqhe 'to hurry', haqqa-ko 'a stone', shenqe 'to peer over', exekeke 'to listen', naxhi 'to be crowded', khaxxe 'to jump', binxo 'to carry kills under one's belt'.

Tone
It is not known if Hadza has lexical tone. It may have a pitch accent system, but the details have not been worked out. There are no known lexical minimal pairs for stress/tone, though the suffix for the habitual mood is tonic.

Vowels
Hadza has five vowels,. Long vowels may occur when intervocalic is elided. For example, or, to climb. Nasal vowels, although uncommon, do occur, though not before consonants that have prenasalized homologues. (That is, and  are in complementary distribution.) All vowels are nasalized before glottalized nasal clicks.

Consonants

 * 1) The nasalization of the glottalized nasal clicks is apparent on preceding vowels, but not during the click itself. The labial (or ) is found in a single mimetic word where it alternates with.
 * 2) The labial ejective is only found in a few words.
 * 3) The palatal affricates may be pronounced with an alveolar onset ( etc.), but this is not required. (If the transcriptions do not display properly, they can also be written etc.)
 * 4) The velar ejective varies between a plosive, a central affricate , a lateral affricate , and a fricative . The other ejective affricates may also appear as ejective fricatives.
 * 5) The lateral approximant is found as a flap  between vowels and occasionally elsewhere, especially in rapid speech.
 * 6) The voiceless velar fricative is only known from a single word, where it alternates with.
 * 7) The glottal is sometimes voiceless, especially in tonic syllables.
 * 8) The prenasalized consonants,, and perhaps (on darker background) seem to be borrowed (Elderkin 1978).

Orthography
A practical orthography has been devised by Miller and Anyawire (Miller et al. 2013). As of 2015, this orthography is not being used by any Hadza speakers and is therefore of limited value for communication in Hadza. It is broadly similar to the orthographies of neighboring languages such as Swahili, Isanzu, Iraqw, and Sandawe. The apostrophe, which is ubiquitous in transcription in the anthropological literature but causes problems with literacy, has been eliminated (apart from Swahili $\langleng’\rangle$ for borrowed ): Glottal stop is indicated by vowel sequences (that is, is written $\langlebee\rangle$, as in $\langleHazabee\rangle$  'the Hadza'), and ejectives and glottalized clicks by gemination (apart from reduced $\langledl\rangle$ instead of *ddl for ). The ejectives are based on the voiced consonants, $\langlebb zz jj dl gg ggw\rangle$, because these are otherwise found mostly in borrowings and thus not common. Tc and tch  are as in Sandawe, sl  as in Iraqw. (This is ultimately a French convention.) Nasalized vowels are $\langlean en in un\rangle$. Long vowels are $\langleâ\rangle$ or $\langleaha\rangle$, because they are usually due to an elided ; likewise, apparent vowel sequences are written with an intervening $\langleh\rangle$ (or a $\langley\rangle$ or $\langlew\rangle$), because a simple sequence would indicate a glottal stop. A tonic syllable may be written with an acute accent, $\langleá\rangle$, but is generally not marked.