There are a number of gaps in the current Maurang consonant system that will probably be filled in the future, as the vocabulary grows and the romanization finds ways to accomodate them. However, the current inventory does provide a good sense of the richness that the final system will have.
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Pal. | Phar. | Plain | Pal. | Lab. | Phar. | Plain | Pal. | Lab. | Phar. | Plain | Plain | Pal. | Lab. | Plain | Pal. | Lab. | Plain | Plain | ||
| Nasals | Voiced | m | mʲ | mˁ | n | nʲ | nʷ | ŋ | |||||||||||||
| Stops | Unvoiced | p | pʲ | pˁ | t | tʲ | tʷ | tˁ | k | kʲ | kʷ | q | qʲ | ʔ | |||||||
| Voiced | b | bʲ | d | dʲ | dʷ | dˁ | g | gʲ | gʷ | ||||||||||||
| Fricatives | Unvoiced | f | θ | θʷ | s | sʲ | sʷ | sˁ | ʃ | χ | χʷ | ħ | h | ||||||||
| Voiced | v | vˁ | ð | ðˁ | z | zʲ | ʒ | ʕ | |||||||||||||
| Approximants | Voiced | l | lʲ | lʷ | lˁ | j | w | ||||||||||||||
| Trills | Voiced | r | rʷ | ||||||||||||||||||
In a cluster, only the last consonant can have contrastive voicing or secondary articulation.
There are only three vowels, distinguishing only height:
| (Variable Backness and Rounding) | |
|---|---|
| High | ɨ |
| Mid | ə |
| Low | a |
Maurang has two types of accent, only one of which is phonemic.
The phonemic accent occurs in some but not all words, and can fall only on the vowels /a/ and /ɨ/. It is realized as a combination of slightly greater emphasis on the given vowel, a near-twofold increase in length, and a somewhat more extreme pitch (whether this is in the lower or higher direction depends on other factors, some of which may be suprasegmental). Currently, the phonemic accent is marked in the romanization by doubling the vowel, but that may eventually change.
The non-phonemic accent occurs only in words that do not already have a phonemic accent. It falls on the first non-/ə/ vowel in the word, or on the first vowel if all of the vowels are /ə/. The non-phonemically accented vowel is neither lengthened nor emphasized, but is pronounced with a slightly more extreme pitch than the surrounding vowels (again, the direction in which the pitch changed depends on other factors).
Syllables are maximally CVC, although it is possible that a small number of initial two-consonant clusters are present in loanwords. Consonant clusters in which the second member is a sonorant are not permitted, and in most dialects are resolved by inserting an epenthetic /ə/ between the two consonants when they would otherwise occur due to affixation. The sole exception to this rule is that geminate sonorants are permitted.
In generaly, IPA superscripts are converted to full letters in transcription (due to the nature of Maurang phonotactics, this never results in ambiguity). Pharyngealized consonants are marked with a following <c>, which is also the letter used for the pharyngeal approximant.
/θ ð ʃ ʒ χ ħ ŋ/ and their superscripted forms are transcribed as <th dh sh zh x hc ng>, and /ɨ/ is written as <y>.