Chechen phonology

Phonology
Some characteristics of Chechen include its wealth of consonants and sounds similar to Arabic and the Salishan languages of Northern America and a large vowel system resembling those of Swedish and German.

Consonants
The Chechen language has, like most indigenous languages of the Caucasus, a large number of consonants: about 40 to 60 (depending on the dialect and the analysis), far more than in most European languages. Typical of the region, a four-way distinction between voiced, voiceless, ejective, and geminate fortis stops is found.

Nearly any consonant may be fortis because of focus gemination, but only the ones above are found in roots. The consonants of the t cell and are denti-alveolar; the others of that column are alveolar. is a back velar, but not quite uvular. The lateral may be velarized, unless it's followed by a front vowel. The trill is usually articulated with a single contact, and therefore sometimes described as a tap. Except in the literary register, and even then only for some speakers, the voiced affricates, have merged into the fricatives ,. is found only in European loanwords. appears both in diphthongs and as a consonant; as a consonant, it has an allophone before front vowels.

The approximately twenty pharyngealized consonants do not appear in the table above. Labial, alveolar, and postalveolar consonants may be pharyngealized, except for ejectives. Pharyngealized consonants do not occur in verbs or adjectives, and in nouns and adverbs they occur predominantly before the low vowels.

Except when following a consonant, is phonetically, and can be argued to be a glottal stop before a "pharyngealized" (actually epiglottalized) vowel. However, it does not have the distribution constraints characteristic of the anterior pharyngealized (epiglottalized) consonants. Although these may be analyzed as an anterior consonant plus (they surface for example as  when voiced and  when voiceless), Nichols argues that given the severe constraints against consonant clusters in Chechen, it is more useful to analyze them as single consonants.

The voiceless alveolar trill contrasts with the voiced version, but only occurs in two roots, vworh "seven" and barh "eight".

Vowels
Unlike most other languages of the Caucasus, Chechen has an extensive inventory of vowels, about 44 (depending on dialect and analysis), more than most languages of Europe. Many of the vowels are due to umlaut, which is highly productive in the standard dialect. None of the spelling systems used so far have distinguished the vowels with complete accuracy.

All vowels may be nasalized. Nasalization is imposed by the genitive, infinitive, and for some speakers the nominative case of adjectives. Nasalization is not strong, but it is audible even in final vowels, which are devoiced.

Some of the diphthongs have significant allophony: = ;  = ;  =.

In closed syllables, long vowels become short in most dialects (not Kisti), but are often still distinct from short vowels (shortened, , , and vs. short , , , and , for example), though which remain distinct depends on the dialect. and are in complementary distribution ( occurs after pharyngealized consonants, whereas  does not, and —identical with  for most speakers—occurs in closed syllables, while  does not) but speakers strongly feel that they are distinct sounds.

Pharyngealization appears to be a feature of the consonants, though some analyses treat it as a feature of the vowels. However, Nichols argues that this does not capture the situation in Chechen well, whereas it is more clearly a feature of the vowel in Ingush: Chechen "one", Ingush, which she analyzes as  and. Vowels have a delayed murmured onset after pharyngealized voiced consonants and a noisy aspirated onset after pharyngealized voiceless consonants. The high vowels are diphthongized,, whereas the diphthongs  undergo metathesis,.

Phonotactics
Chechen permits syllable-initial clusters, and non-initial plus any consonant and any obstruent plus a uvular of the same manner. Only cluster of three consonants to be permitted is.