Muong phonology

Consonant inventory
The following table details the consonants of those dialects that show a full voiced-voiceless distinction in the stops (being Mường Bi, Mường Thành, Mường Động, and Ba Trại).
 * {| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"

! colspan = "2" | ! Bilabial ! Alveolar ! Palatal ! Velar ! Glottal ! colspan = "2" | Nasal ! rowspan = "3" | Stop ! voiceless ! aspirated ! voiced ! rowspan = "2" | Fricative ! voiceless ! voiced ! colspan = "2" | Lateral
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }

The Mường Vang dialect completely lacks the distinction between the voiced and unvoiced stop pairs, , , having only the voiceless one of each pair. The Mường Khói and Mường Ống dialects have the full voiceless series, but lack among the voiced stops. The Thạch Sơn dialect on the other hand lacks.

Furthermore, the Mường Khói dialect lacks the aspirated alveolar, but has a instead. This dialect is also described as having the labio-velars and.

All of these consonants can appear syllable-initially. At the end of syllables only the nasals, the voiceless stops , the lateral , and the glides are allowed. Of these phonemes, the palatals have been analysed as glide + velar. Furthermore the distribution of syllable-final seems to be more restricted than the distribution of the other final consonants.

Vowel inventory
The vowel inventory is given in the following table. It appears to be quite uniform among the different dialects. Two of the vowels (/ɤ/ and /a/) can be long or short.
 * {| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"

! rowspan = "2" | ! rowspan = "2" | Front ! colspan = "2" | Back ! unrounded ! rounded ! High ! Higher mid ! Lower Mid ! Low
 * colspan="3" |
 * }

Apart from these monophthongs, there are also three diphthongs.