Consonants[]
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | ʔ | |
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | |||
| ejective | pʼ | tʼ | kʼ | |||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | ||||
| aspirated | t͡sʰ | |||||
| ejective | t͡sʼ | |||||
| Fricative | s | x | h | |||
| Nasal | plain | m | n | |||
| glottalized | ˀm | ˀn | ||||
| Rhotic | r | |||||
| Lateral | plain | l | ||||
| glottalized | ˀl | |||||
| Approximant | plain | w | j | |||
| glottalized | ˀw | ˀj | ||||
Vowels[]
Yana has five vowels, /i, ɛ, a, ɔ, u/; Sapir's (1910) comparanda with vowels of English, French and German clearly indicate that the mid vowels are lower mid. Each vowel occurs with phonemic vowel length.