Yao phonetics and orthography

As in English, unvoiced plosives are breathed and voiced plosives are not. There are conventionally only five 'pure' vowels, viz. a, e, i, o, u, though there is some variation in vowel length. Yao is minimally tonal language, as is common in Bantu languages.

In each of the main three countries where Yao is spoken, the orthography differs widely, and there is a low literacy rate. In Tanzania, the orthography is based on that of Swahili, whereas in Malawi it is based on that of Chewa. The Malawian form uses the following characters:

Macrons can be used to prevent ambiguity that would otherwise arise due to the lack of representation of vowel length.