Burushaski primarily has five vowels, /i e a æ o u ə/. Various contractions result in long vowels; stressed vowels (marked with acute accents in Berger's transcription) tend to be longer and less "open" than unstressed ones ([i e a æ o u ə] as opposed to [ɪ ɛ ʌ ɑ ɔ ʊ ɨ]). Long vowels also occur in loans and in a few onomatopoeic words (Grune 1998). All vowels have nasal counterparts in Hunza (in some expressive words) and in Nager (also in proper names and a few other words).
Berger (1998) finds the following consonants to be phonemic, shown below in his transcription and in the IPA:
| Bilabial | Dental/Alveolar | Palatal | Retroflex | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | aspirated | plain | aspirated | plain | aspirated | plain | aspirated | plain | aspirated | plain | aspirated | |||
| Nasal | m | n | ṅ /ŋ/ | |||||||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | ph /pʰ/ | t | th /tʰ/ | ṭ /ʈ/ | ṭh /ʈʰ/ | k | kh /kʰ/ | q | qh /qʰ/ | |||
| voiced | b | d | ḍ /ɖ/ | g | ||||||||||
| Affricate | voiceless | c /t͡s/ | ch /t͡sʰ/ | ć /t͡ɕ/ | ćh /t͡ɕʰ/ | c̣ /ʈ͡ʂ/ | c̣h /ʈ͡ʂʰ/ | |||||||
| voiced | j /d͡ʑ/ | j̣ /ɖ͡ʐ/ | ||||||||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | s | ś /ɕ/ | ṣ /ʂ/ | h | |||||||||
| voiced | z | ġ /ʁ/ | ||||||||||||
| Trill | r | |||||||||||||
| Approximant | l | y [j] | ỵ /ɻ/ | w | ||||||||||