2.3 Consonantal segments.

There is a single stop series (as in Anindilyakwa, and languages to the south), in contrast to Ngandi and other languages to the north and west with fortis vs. lenis series in medial position. Phonetically, interdental /dh/ and to a lesser extent laminoalveolar /j/ are pronounced like fortis consonants in the languages with both series, while the other stops are phonetically lenis (i.e., short and voiced) at least intervocalically.

There is a corresponding full series of nasals, but interdental /nh/ is very rare, occurring only in a handful of fauna nouns (none of high frequency): /minha:ri/ 'centre section of ray fat', /ma:nha(g)/ 'heron sp.', /munhal/ 'perchlet’. Note that /ny/ is our symbol for laminoalveolar, equivalent to /ñ/, and that /ng/ is the symbol for velar, equivalent to /Ŋ/.

There are three laterals; note that an interdental lateral is present (though absent from most neighbouring languages), but no laminoalveolar /ly/ occurs in the language (there is a /ly/ cluster but it has no unit-phoneme articulatory or structural features). As in most Australian languages, there are two rhotics: tap /r/ (not trilled, except in its rare word-initial occurrences and then only optionally), and a retroflexed approximant /r/ roughly similar to the "r" of American English.

Semivowels are /y/ and /w/. The latter is divided into /w1/ and /w2/ in morpheme-initial position because of different morphophonemic behaviour (/w1/ alternates with /g/, /w2/ with /b/); other cases (non-morpheme-initial, and morpheme-initial in morphemes which do not occur in relevant morphophonemic contexts) are just transcribed as /w/ and are indeterminate morphophonemically. More details on /w1/ and /w2/ are given below.

/b/ and /m/ are phonetically bilabial. Interdental /dh nh lh/ are strongly laminal. Alveolars /d n l/ and retroflexed consonants /d n l/ are both apical, differing from each other mainly in the distinctive r-coloured onset to the retroflexed consonants. Hearing the distinction clearly requires a preceding vowel, so the two series are effectively indistinguishable following a stop, nasal, or liquid. For convenience, in the table we list /r/ with the alveolars and /r/ with the retroflexed consonants; this is approximately correct articulatorily (and is consistent with phonological alternations), but the main difference between /r/ and /r/ is not point of articulation but rather tap vs. approximant constriction. Laminoalveolar /j/ and /ny/ are clearly distinct from the other laminal series (interdental) in this language; /ny/ sounds rather like palatal nasals in Romance languages, but /j/ is different from the English affricate "j" or similar European phonemes, notably in its more fronted articulation and its lack of an affricated release when syllable- or word-final. Velar /g/ and /ng/ are normally front velars rather than back velars/uvulars. Because of its lack of aspiration, word-final /g/ is difficult to hear after a liquid or even after a vowel.