Consonant inventory[]
| Labial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | ɱ | n | ɲ | ŋ | ɴ | ||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | c | k | q | ||
| voiced | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | ɢ | |||
| Fricative | voiceless | ɸ | f | s | ʃ | ç | x | χ |
| voiced | β | v | z | ʒ | ʝ | ɣ | ʁ | |
| Approximant | w | ʋ | r | j | ɰ | |||
Vowel inventory[]
| Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | unrounded | rounded | |
| Close | i | y | ɯ | u |
| Close-mid | e | ø | ɤ | o |
| Open-mid | ɛ | œ | ʌ | ɔ |
| Near-open | æ | |||
| Open | a | ɶ | ɑ | ɒ |
Phonotactics[]
While most languages of the Turkic family exhibit palatal vowel harmony, Trakai Karaim shows harmony in palatalization of consonants. Thus, in any given word, only palatalized or only non-palatalized consonants can be found (Németh 2003). Palatalized consonants occur in the presence of front vowels, and non-palatalized consonants occur in the presence of back vowels. Similarly to most Turkic languages, virtually all of the consonants in Karaim exist in both a palatalized and a non-palatalized form, which may be further evidence of their genetic relationship (Hansson 2007). However, care must be taken in assuming as much, because Karaim has been in contact with the Lipka Tatar language in Lithuania for hundreds of years.
Karaim also exhibits vowel harmony, whereby suffix vowels harmonize for front or back quality with the vowels in the stem of a word (Zajaczkowski 1961).