Vowels

Archi has a symmetric six-vowel system (/i e ə a o u/).^[4]

All vowels except for /ə/ can occur in five varieties: short, pharyngealized, high tone, long (with high tone), and pharyngealized with high tone (e.g. /a/, /aˤ/, /á/, /áː/, and /áˤ/). Of all these, only /ə/ and /íˤ/ do not occur word-initially.^[7] Examples of non-initial /íˤ/ are /díˤt͡ʃa/ ('to be fat')^[8] and /iˤntíˤmmaj/ ('brain').^[9]

Consonants

Of all known languages, Archi has the world's largest phonemic non-click consonant inventory, with only the recently extinct Ubykh of the Northwest Caucasian languages having a few more. The table below shows all consonants that can be found in the Archi Language Tutorial^[4] and the Archi Dictionary.^[7]

1. These have no word-initial dictionary entries (even though /pː/, /tː/, and /kː/ are relatively common).
2. These appear in the Tutorial but have no dictionary entries.
3. This does not appear in the Tutorial but does have a word-internal dictionary entry (in /mot͡sːór/, 'alpine pasture used in summer').^[10]

Some of these sounds are very rare. For example, /ʁˤʷ/ has only one dictionary entry word-internally (in /íʁˤʷdut/, 'heavy')^[11] and two entries word-initially. Likewise, /ʟ̝/ has only two dictionary entries: /náʟ̝dut/ ('blue; unripe')^[12] and /k͡𝼄ʼéʟ̝dut/ ('crooked, curved').^[13]

The fortis consonants are not simply two instances of the same consonant, though they do appear largely complementary, with the double instances /mm/, /ll/, and /nn/ being the most common and /zz/ less so. That said, /pp/ can still be found in /𝼄íppu/ ('three').^[14] This is also noted by Kodzasov (1977),^[15] who describes the fortis consonants as follows:

"Strong phonemes are characterized by the intensiveness (tension) of the articulation. The intensity of the pronunciation leads to a natural lengthening of the duration of the sound, and that is why strong [consonants] differ from weak ones by greater length. [However,] the adjoining of two single weak sounds does not produce a strong one […] Thus, the gemination of a sound does not by itself create its tension."

The voiceless velar lateral fricative /𝼄/, the voiced velar lateral fricative /ʟ̝/, and the corresponding voiceless and ejective affricates /k͡𝼄/, /k͡𝼄ʼ/ are extremely unusual speech sounds among the languages of the world, because velar fricatives are usually central rather than lateral. The velar laterals are further forward than velars in most languages and could better be called prevelar, like the Tutorial does.^[4]

Nouns

Archi nouns inflect for number (singular or plural) and for one of 10 regular cases and 5 locative cases that can all take one of 6 directional suffixes.^[4] There are four noun classes, which are only evident from verbal agreement.^[4]

Diminutive

The inclusions of "little" and "young" in the phrases translate a diminutive, which in Archi language commonly refers either to a smaller or younger version of the subject. The non-diminutive nouns in the above examples belong to noun class III, while their diminutives belong to noun class IV. This difference in noun class is reflected on the verb in all of these examples, by the contrast between class III agreement in b from class IV in ∅ (with no b). The -b- in the past tense appears in front of the -x̄u / -č̣u / -ku inflection, while in the present tense the b- is the first letter of the verb. For the nouns referring to inanimate objects, the class shift is the only sign of the diminutive: the noun itself does not change in form. E.g. x́it means both "ladle" (III) and "spoon" (IV), k̂ut̄ali both "bag" (III) and "little bag" (IV). Nouns pertaining to younger animals have different words, e.g. dogi "donkey" (III) but ḳêrt "young donkey" (IV), nôiš "horse" (III) but uri "young horse" (IV).