Aleut phonology

Consonants
The consonant phonemes of the various Aleut dialects are represented below. The first line of each cell indicates the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) representation of the phoneme; the second indicates how the phoneme is represented in the Aleut orthography. Italicized orthographic forms represent phonemes borrowed from Russian or English; bold orthographic forms represent native Aleut phonemes. Note that some phonemes are unique to specific dialects of Aleut.


 * Only found natively in Attuan ( is also found in loanwords)
 * † Only found in Eastern Aleut
 * ‡ Only found in Atkan and in loanwords

Taff et al. (2001, p. 234) note that modern Eastern Aleut has done away with most voicing distinctions among nasals, sibilants and approximants.

Vowels
Aleut has six native vowel phonemes: the short vowels, , , , , and , and their long counterparts , , , , , and. These are represented orthographically as i, e, a, j, u, ii, ee, aa, jj, oo, and uu respectively.

Before or after a uvular consonant, is retracted to,  is retracted to , and  to. Before or after a coronal consonant, becomes  or, and  becomes  or  (Bergsland 1994, p. xix; Bergsland 1997, pp. 21–22; see also Taff et al. 2001, pp. 247–249).