Consonants[]
Atsugewi has 32 consonants. Most of these form pairs of plain and glottalized. Plosives and affricates also have a third, aspirated member of the series (except for the single glottal stop).
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | plain | m | n | ŋ | ɴ | |||
| glott. | mˀ | nˀ | ŋˀ | ɴˀ | ||||
| Fricative | Voiceless | plain | p | t | tʃ | k | q | ʔ |
| ejective | pʼ | tʼ | tʃʼ | kʼ | qʼ | |||
| aspir. | pʰ | tʰ | tʃʰ | kʰ | qʰ | |||
| Voiced | b | d | dʒ | ɡ | ɢ | |||
| Fricative | Voiceless | plain | ɸ | s | ʃ | x | χ | h |
| ejective | ɸʼ | sʼ | ʃʼ | xʼ | χʼ | hʼ | ||
| Voiced | β | z | ʒ | ɣ | ʁ | ɦ | ||
| Rhotic | plain | ʙ | r | ʀ | ||||
| glott. | ʙˀ | rˀ | ʀˀ | |||||
| Approximant | plain | l | j | w | ||||
| glott. | lˀ | jˀ | wˀ | |||||
Vowels[]
Atsugewi language has basically only three vowels: /a/, /o/, and /i/; /e/ is the allophone of /i/ while /o/ is the allophone of /u/. However, it has been supported by Leonard Talmy (1972) that there are instances such as the word ce "the eye(s)" where e can be analyzed as a proper phoneme.