Purépecha phonology

In all dialects of P'urhépecha, stress accent is phonemic. As in Spanish orthography, the stressed syllable is indicated by the acute accent. Examples of minimal pairs are:
 * karáni 'write' — kárani 'fly'
 * p'amáni 'wrap it' — p'ámani 'touch a liquid'

Usually the second syllable of the word is stressed, occasionally the first.

The phonemic inventory of the Tarécuato dialect is presented below. The Tarécuato dialect differs from other dialects in having a velar nasal phoneme. The table of phonemes uses International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols and also gives the alphabet equivalents (enclosed in parentheses) in nonobvious cases.

Vowels
The two mid vowels /e, o/ are uncommon; /o/ is especially rare.

The high central vowel occurs almost exclusively after /s/ or /ts/, and is almost a predictible allophone of /i/ in that position.

The final vowel of a word is usually whispered or deleted, unless the word is at the end of a phrase or sentence.

Sequences of vowels do occur, but are very rare except for sequences generated by adding grammatical suffixes such as the pluralizers -echa or -icha, the copula -i, or the genitive -iri; and a sequence of vowels (sounds, not letters) virtually never occurs as the first two sounds of a word.

Consonants
P'urhépecha is one of the minority of languages in the Mesoamerican region which do not have a phonemic glottal stop (a distinction shared by the Huave language and by some dialects of Nahuatl). It lacks any laterals ('l'-sounds). However, in the speech of many young speakers, the retroflex rhotic has been replaced by, due to Spanish influence. There are distinct series of nonaspirated and aspirated plosives and affricates; aspiration is spelled with an apostrophe. There are two rhotics ('r'-sounds; one of them retroflex).

The official orthography does not have distinct representations for the four phonemes, , ,. It uses the letter 'i' for both the phonemes and the letter 'u' for both of the phonemes  (These two semivowels are fairly rare). When k and k' are followed by u and another vowel this virtually always represents the labio-velar phonemes.

Intervocally, the aspirated consonants become pre-aspirated; when following nasals, they lose their aspiration entirely. The unaspirated consonants become voiced when following nasals.