Consonants[]
Alawa has a typical consonant inventory for an Indigenous Australian language, with five contrastive places of articulation, multiple lateral consonants, and no voicing contrast among the stops.[1]
| Alveolar | Palatal | Peripheral | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alveolar | Retroflex | Alveo-palatal | Velar | Bilabial | |
| Prenasalised Stop | ⁿd | ⁿɖ | ⁿɟ | ⁿɡ | ⁿb |
| Devoiced Stop | t | ʈ | c | k | p |
| Nasals | n | ɳ | ɲ | ŋ | m |
| Laterals | l | ɭ | ʎ | ||
| Vibrants | r | ||||
| Glide | ɹ | j | w | ||
Note: there are no standardised IPA symbols for alveopalatal stops.
Vowels[]
The vowel system of Alawa is made up of four vowel phonemes: the high front vowel /i/, the high back vowel /u/, the mid front vowel /e/, and the low central vowel /a/.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | ɨ | u |
| Mid-high | e | ɤ | |
| Mid-low | œ | ɔ | |
| Low | a | ɑ |
There are no rounding contrasts or length contrasts in this language.[2]