The Akha dialect spoken in Alu village, 55 kilometers northwest of Chiang Rai city in Chiang Rai Province, Thailand is described below. Katsura conducted his study in during the late 1960s. With a population of 400 it was, at the time, one of the largest Akha villages in Northern Thailand and was still growing as a result of cross-border migration from Burma. The Akha in Alu spoke no Standard Thai and communicated with outsiders using either Lahu Na or Shan.
The Alu dialect has 23 or 24 consonants depending on how the syllabic nasal is analyzed. The /m̩/, realized variously as [ˀm] or [m̥], can be analyzed as a separate single consonant or as sequences of /ʔm/ and /hm/. Katsura chose the latter but listed the /m/ component of the syllabic consonant with the vowels.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Stop | voiced | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | |
| tenuis | p | t | c | k | ʔ* | |
| aspirate | pʰ | tʰ | cʰ | kʰ | ||
| Fricative | tenuis | f | s | x | h | |
| voiced | v | z | ɣ | |||
| Approximant | l | j | ɰ | |||
*Akha /ʔ/ is often described as glottal "tension" rather than a true stop
Any consonant may begin a syllable, but native Akha syllables which don't end in a vowel may only end in either -m or -ɔŋ. A few loan words have been noted that end in -aŋ or -aj. In the case of a nasal coda, some vowels become nasalized. Alu Akha distinguishes ten vowel qualities, contrasting rounded and unrounded back vowels at three heights while only the mid front vowels contrast roundness.
| Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |
| Close | /i/ | /ɯ/ | /u/ | |
| Mid | /e/ | /ø/ | /ə/ | /o/ |
| Open-mid | /ɛ/ | /ʌ/ | /ɔ/ | |
| Open | /æ/ | /a/ | /ɒ/ | |
Three vowels, /u/, /ɔ/ and /ɯ/, show marked nasalization when followed by a nasal consonant becoming /ũ/, /ɔ̃/ and /ɯ̃/, respectively.