Ikwerre phonology

Vowels
Ikwerre distinguishes vowels by quality (frontedness and height), the presence or absence of nasalization, and the presence or absence of advanced tongue root. There is also a vowel * which is posited to explain syllabic nasal consonants in accounts of the language which state that Ikwerre has no nasal stops. This sound is realized as or a syllabic nasal which is homorganic to the following consonant.

Vowel harmony
Ikwerre exhibits two kinds of vowel harmony:
 * 1) Every vowel in an Ikwerre word, with a few exceptions, agrees with the other vowels in the word as to the presence or absence of advanced tongue root.
 * 2) Vowels of the same height in adjacent syllables must all be either front or back, i.e. the pairs &,  & ,  & , and  &  cannot occur in adjacent syllables. Vowels of different heights, however, need not match for frontness/backness either. This doesn't apply to the first vowel in nouns beginning with a vowel or with , and doesn't apply to onomatopoeic words.

Consonants
The oral consonants occur before oral vowels, and their nasal allophones  before nasal vowels. The "non-explosive stops" are not plosives (not pulmonic), and are equivalent to implosives in other varieties of Igbo.

The tap may sometimes be realized as an approximant.

Tone
Ikwerre is a tonal language.