Basque phonology

Vowels
Basque has a distinction between laminal and apical articulation for the alveolar fricatives and affricates. With the laminal alveolar fricative, the friction occurs across the blade of the tongue, the tongue tip pointing toward the lower teeth. This is the usual in most European languages. It is written with an orthographic $⟨z⟩$. By contrast, the voiceless apicoalveolar fricative is written $⟨s⟩$; the tip of the tongue points toward the upper teeth and friction occurs at the tip (apex). For example, zu "you" is distinguished from su "fire". The affricate counterparts are written $⟨tz⟩$ and $⟨ts⟩$. So, etzi "the day after tomorrow" is distinguished from etsi "to give up"; atzo "yesterday" is distinguished from atso "old woman".

In the westernmost parts of the Basque country, only the apical $⟨s⟩$ and the alveolar affricate $⟨tz⟩$ are used.

Basque also features postalveolar sibilants (, written $⟨x⟩$, and, written $⟨tx⟩$), sounding like English sh and ch.

There are two palatal stops, voiced and unvoiced, as well as a palatal nasal and a palatal lateral (the palatal stops are not present in all dialects). These and the postalveolar sounds are typical of diminutives, which are used frequently in child language and motherese (mainly to show affection rather than size). For example, tanta "drop" vs. ttantta "droplet". A few common words, such as txakur "dog", use palatal sounds even though in current usage they have lost the diminutive sense; the corresponding non-palatal forms now acquiring an augmentative or pejorative sense: zakur "big dog". Many dialects of Basque exhibit a derived palatalization effect in which coronal onset consonants are changed into the palatal counterpart after the high front vowel. For example, the in egin "to act" becomes palatal in southern and western dialects when a suffix beginning with a vowel is added:  =  "the action",  =  "doing".

The letter $⟨j⟩$ has a variety of realizations according to the regional dialect:, as pronounced from west to east in south Bizkaia and coastal Lapurdi, central Bizkaia, east Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, south Navarre, inland Lapurdi and Low Navarre, and Zuberoa, respectively.

The letter $⟨j⟩$ is silent in the Spanish Basque provinces, but pronounced in the French ones. Unified Basque spells it except when it is predictable, in a position following a consonant.

The vowel system is the same as Spanish for most speakers. It consists of five pure vowels,. Speakers of the Zuberoan dialect also have a sixth, front rounded vowel (represented in writing by $⟨h⟩$ and pronounced as ), as well as a set of contrasting nasalized vowels, indicating a strong influence from Gascon.

Unless they are recent loanwords (e.g. Ruanda (Rwanda), radar...), words cannot begin with the letter $⟨ü⟩$, and when they were borrowed earlier, the initial r- is changed to err-, more rarely to irr- (irratia [the radio], irrisa [the rice]). This is similar to how in Spanish, faced with words beginning with s+ consonant (such as "state") get an initial e (estado).

Stress and pitch
Basque features great dialectal variation in stress, from a weak pitch accent in the central dialects to a marked stress in some outer dialects, with varying patterns of stress placement. Stress is in general not distinctive (and for historical comparisons not very useful); there are, however, a few instances where stress is phonemic, serving to distinguish between a few pairs of stress-marked words and between some grammatical forms (mainly plurals from other forms), e.g. basóà ("the forest", absolutive case) vs. básoà ("the glass", absolutive case; an adoption from Spanish vaso); basóàk ("the forest", ergative case) vs. básoàk ("the glass", ergative case) vs. básoak ("the forests" or "the glasses", absolutive case).

Given its great deal of variation among dialects, stress is not marked in the standard orthography and Euskaltzaindia (the Academy of the Basque Language) provides only general recommendations for a standard placement of stress, basically to place a high-pitched weak stress (weaker than that of Spanish, let alone that of English) on the second syllable of a syntagma, and a low-pitched even-weaker stress on its last syllable, except in plural forms where stress is moved to the first syllable.

This scheme provides Basque with a distinct musicality which sets its sound apart from the prosodical patterns of Spanish (which tends to stress the second-to-last syllable). Some Euskaldun berriak ("new Basque-speakers", i.e. second-language Basque-speakers) with Spanish as their first language tend to carry the prosodical patterns of Spanish into their pronunciation of Basque, giving rise to a pronunciation that is considered substandard; e.g. pronouncing nire ama ("my mum") as nire áma (– – ´ –), instead of as niré amà (– ´ – `).