In all dialects of Purépecha, the stress accent is phonemic. As in Spanish orthography, a stressed syllable is indicated by the acute accent. Minimal pairs are formed:
- karáni 'write' — kárani 'fly'
- p'amáni 'wrap it' — p'ámani 'touch a liquid'
Usually, the second syllable of the word is stressed, but occasionally, it is the first.
The phonemic inventory of the Tarécuato dialect is presented below. It differs from other dialects in having a velar nasal phoneme. The table of phonemes uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and also gives the alphabet equivalents, enclosed in angle brackets, if it is not obvious.
Vowels[]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | ɨ ⟨ ï ⟩ | u |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Open | æ | ɑ ⟨ a ⟩ | ɔ |
The two mid vowels /e, o/ are uncommon, especially the latter.
The high central vowel is almost always after /s/ or /ts/ and is then almost an allophone of /i/.
The final vowel of a word is usually whispered or deleted except before a pause.
Vowel clusters are very rare except for sequences that are generated by adding grammatical suffixes like the plural -echa or -icha, the copula -i, or the genitive -iri. Vowel clusters are usually not the first two sounds of a word.
Consonants[]
Purépecha is one of the few languages in the Mesoamerica without a phonemic glottal stop (a distinction shared by the Huave language and by some Nahuan languages). It lacks any laterals ('l'-sounds). However, in the speech of many young speakers, the retroflex rhotic has been replaced by [l] under the influence of Spanish.
There are distinct series of nonaspirated and aspirated consonants and affricate consonants; aspiration is noted by an apostrophe. There are two rhotics ('r'-sounds, one of them being retroflex).
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | labialized | |||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | nh /ŋ/ | ||||
| Stop | plain | p | t | c | k | kʷ | ||
| aspirated | p' /pʰ/ | t' /tʰ/ | c' /cʰ/ | k' /kʰ/ | kʷʰ | |||
| voiced | b | d | l /ɟ/ | ɡ | ɡʷ | |||
| Affricate | plain | t͡s | ch /t͡ʃ/ | |||||
| aspirated | ts' /t͡sʰ/ | ch' /t͡ʃʰ/ | ||||||
| voiced | d͡z | ʃ /d͡ʒ/ | ||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f /ɸ/ | s | x /ʃ/ | ç | j /x/ | ||
| voiced | v /β/ | z | ʒ | h /ʝ/ | ɣ | |||
| Trill | y /ʙ/ | r | ||||||
| Approximant | w /ɹ/ | rh /ɽ/ | i /j/ | q /ɰ/ | u /w/ | |||
The official orthography does not have distinct representations for the four phonemes /kʷ/, /kʷʰ/, /w/, /j/. It uses the letter ⟨i⟩ for both /i, j/ and the letter ⟨u⟩ for both /u, w/, but both semivowels are fairly rare. When ⟨k⟩ or ⟨k'⟩ is followed by ⟨u⟩ and another vowel letter, the sequence virtually always represents the labio-velar phonemes.
Intervocally, aspirated consonants become pre-aspirated. After nasals, they lose their aspiration entirely. Unaspirated consonants become voiced after nasals.