E phonology

Like most Southeast Asian languages, including Tai and Chinese varieties, E is tonal. The language is described as having seven tones, with the seventh varying allophonically with the length of the vowel it is attached to. With numbers ranging from 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest tone and 5 the highest, the contours of the various tones in E are as follows.

E's consonant and vowel inventories are mostly similar to those of its parent languages. However, it contains a few unusual consonants: the voiceless alveolar nasals /n̥/ and /ŋ̥/, the voiceless bilabial nasal /m̥/, and the voiceless alveolar lateral approximant /l̥/. All are voiceless versions of consonants that in most languages are always voiced. E allows syllabic consonants and diphthongs.