Nhanda differs somewhat from its neighbouring languages in that it has a phonemic glottal stop, is initial-dropping (i.e. it has lost many initial consonants, leading to vowel-initial words) and the stop consonants show a phonemic length contrast.
Vowels[]
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i iː | u uː |
| Mid | e eː | o oː |
| Low | a aː | ɒ ɒː |
Consonants[]
| Peripheral | Laminal | Apical | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial | Velar | Palatal | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | ||
| Stop | p | k | c | t̪ | t | ʈ | ʔ |
| Nasal | m | ŋ | ɲ | n̪ | n | ɳ | |
| Fricative | ɸ | x | ç | θ | s | ʂ | h |
| Lateral | ʟ | ʎ | l̪ | l | ɭ | ||
| Rhotic | ʙ | r | ɻ | ||||
| Semivowel | w | j | |||||