Tuvan sounds

Consonants
Tuvan has 19 native consonant phonemes.


 * 1) The distinction between initial bilabial and alveolar stops is based on aspiration for most speakers and voicing for others.
 * 2) and  are found in some Russian loanwords.

Vowels
Vowels in Tuvan exist in three varieties: short, long and short with low pitch. Tuvan long vowels have a duration that is at least (and often more than) twice as long as that of short vowels. Contrastive low pitch may occur on short vowels, and when it does, it causes them to increase in duration by at least one-half. When using low pitch, Tuvan speakers employ a pitch that is at the very low end of their modal voice pitch. For some speakers, it is even lower and using what is phonetically known as creaky voice. When a vowel in a monosyllabic word has low pitch, speakers apply low pitch only to the first half of that vowel (e.g. 'horse'). This is followed by a noticeable pitch rise, as the speaker returns to modal pitch in the second half of the vowel.

The acoustic impression is similar to that of a rising tone (e.g. the rising pitch contour of the Mandarin second tone, although the Tuvan pitch begins much lower.) However, Tuvan is considered a pitch accent language with contrastive low pitch instead of a tonal language. When the low pitch vowel occurs in a multi-syllabic word, there is no rising pitch contour or lengthening effect (e.g. 'his/her/its horse'). These low pitch vowels were previously referred to in the literature as either kargyraa or pharyngealized vowels. Phonetic studies have demonstrated that the defining characteristic of these vowels is low pitch. See Harrison 2001 for a phonetic and acoustic study of Tuvan low pitch vowels.

Vowels may also be nasalized, in the environment of nasal consonants, but nasalization is non-contrastive.

Vowel harmony
Tuvan has two systems of vowel harmony which strictly govern the distribution of vowels within words and suffixes. Backness harmony or what is sometimes called 'palatal' harmony requires all vowels within a word to be either back or front. Rounding harmony or what is sometimes called 'labial' harmony requires a vowel to be rounded if it is a high vowel and it appears in a syllable immediately following a rounded vowel. Low rounded vowels are restricted to the first syllable of a word, and a vowel in a non-initial syllable may only be rounded if it meets the conditions of rounding harmony (it must both be a high vowel  and be preceded by a rounded vowel). See Harrison 2001 for a detailed description of Tuvan vowel harmony systems.