Vowels[]
Vowels in Breton may be short or long. All unstressed vowels are short; stressed vowels can be short or long (vowel lengths are not noted in usual orthographies as they are implicit in the phonology of particular dialects, and not all dialects pronounce stressed vowels as long).
All vowels can also be nasalized, which is noted by appending an 'n' letter after the base vowel, or by adding a combining tilde above the vowel (most commonly and easily done for a and o due to the Portuguese letters), or more commonly by non-ambiguously appending an ⟨ñ⟩ letter after the base vowel (this depends on the orthographic variant).
| Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |
| Close | i /i/ | u /y/ | ou /u/ | |
| Close-mid | e /e/ | eu /ø/ | o /o/ | |
| Open-mid | e /ɛ/ | eu /œ/ | o /ɔ/ | |
| Open | a /a/ | a /ɑ/ | ||
Diphthongs are /ai, ei/.
Consonants[]
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | plain | lab. | ||||||||
| Nasal | m /m/ | n /n/ | gn /ɲ/ | ||||||||
| Plosive | voiced | b /b/ | d /d/ | g /ɡ/ | gw, gou /ɡʷ/ | ||||||
| voiceless | p /p/ | t /t/ | k /k/ | kw, kou /kʷ/ | |||||||
| Fricative | voiced | v /v/ | z, d /ð/ | z, zh /z/ | j /ʒ/ | c'h /ɣ/ | |||||
| voiceless | f /f/ | s /s/ | ch /ʃ/ | c'h /x/ | h, zh /h/ | ||||||
| Trill | r /r/ | r /ʁ/ | |||||||||
| Approximant | central | r /ɹ/ | y /j/ | u /ɥ/ | w /w/ | ||||||
| lateral | l /l/ | lh /ʎ/ | |||||||||