Hausa phonology

Consonants
Hausa has between 23 and 25 consonant phonemes depending on the speaker.

The three-way contrast between palatalized velars, plain velars , and labialized velars is found only before long and short , e.g.  ('grass'),  ('to increase'),  ('shea-nuts'). Before front vowels, only palatalized and labialized velars occur, e.g. ('jealousy') vs. ('side of body'). Before rounded vowels, only labialized velars occur, e.g. ('ringworm').

Glottalic consonants
Hausa has glottalic consonants (implosives and ejectives) at four or five places of articulation (depending on the dialect). They require movement of the glottis during pronunciation and have a staccato sound.

They are written with modified versions of Latin letters. They can also be denoted with an apostrophe, either before or after depending on the letter, as shown below.

b' /, an implosive consonant, , sometimes ;

d' /, an implosive , sometimes ;

ts', an ejective consonant, or, according to the dialect;

ch', an ejective (does not occur in Kano dialect)

k' /, an ejective ; and  are separate consonants;

'y is a palatalized glottal stop,, found in only a small number of high-frequency words (e.g. "children"). Historically it developed from palatalized.

Vowels
Hausa has 5 phonetic vowel sounds, which can be either short or long, giving a total of 10 monophthongs. In addition, there are 4 joint vowels (diphthongs), giving a total number of 14 vowel phonemes.


 * Monophthongs: Short (single) vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/. Long vowels: /aa/, /ee/, /ii/, /oo/, and /uu/.


 * Diphthongs: /ai/, /au/, /iu/ and /ui/.

Tones
Hausa is a tonal language. Each of its five vowels may have low tone, high tone or falling tone. In standard written Hausa, tone is not marked. In recent linguistic and pedagogical materials, tone is marked by means of diacritics.


 * à è ì ò ù – low tone: grave accent (`)


 * â ê î ô û – falling tone: circumflex (ˆ)

An acute accent (´) may be used for high tone, but the usual practice is to leave high tone unmarked.