Stieng phonology

Consonants
Haupers (1969) analyzes Stieng as having 25 consonant phonemes with three-way contrasts of voiced, unvoiced and pre-glottalized with aspiration described as a consonant cluster involving simple (i.e. not pre-glottalized) stops plus. Analyses which include the aspirated series as independent phonemes yield 33 consonants and a five-way contrast. Consonants appearing in syllable coda are devoiced and unreleased. For the alveolar approximate, the trilled is found in free variation with the flapped. The voiceless palatal fricative appears only in syllable coda as a complimentary allophone of.

Vowels
The Stieng vowel system consists of fifteen monophthongs and two diphthongs. In addition to vowel quality, quantitative length (duration) is also phonemic for vowels other than in closed syllables. The vowel is short before  and long elsewhere. This lack of minimal pairs for and  suggests that, ,  and  are all allophones. Symbols in parenthesis represent allophonic variations.