Consonants

Among other northern dialects of Zhuang, /w/ may be heard as a [β] or [v] sound. Absent consonant produces /ʔ/.

An unusual and rare feature that Zhuang has is the lack of /s/, which is a common fricative among most languages that have them (one other notable exception is in the Australian languages), and yet Zhuang has five fricatives and no /s/.

Vowels

[ə] only occurs in diphthong or triphthong sounds.

[ɤ] can occur in recent Chinese loanwords.^[8]

Among other northern Zhuang dialects, /e, o/ have shortened allophones of [ɛ, ɔ].^[9]

Tones

Standard Zhuang has six tones, reduced to two (numbered 3 and 6) in checked syllables:

The sentence Son mwngz hwnj max gvaq dah (Son mɯŋƨ hɯnз maч gvaƽ daƅ) "Teach thee to climb on a horse to cross a river" is often used to help people remember the six tones.

Tones for open syllables (not terminated by a closing consonant) are written at end of syllables.

Closed syllables can only have two tones, high and mid checked, high being shown by the final consonant being devoiced (p/t/k), and mid by it being voiced (b/d/g).

Pronouns

Syntax

Zhuang uses an SVO word order.

Words

Zhuang words can be made up of one, two, or three syllables - one and two-syllable words (e.g. dahraix, 'really') cannot be broken down into morphemes, but trisyllabic words can be. Compound words also exist - for example, mingzcoh, 'name'. Prefixes and suffixes are also frequently used, such as "daih-" (borrowed from Chinese: 第; pinyin: dì). Reduplication is also used.^[8]

Sawndip

The Old Zhuang script, Sawndip, is a Chinese character–based writing system, similar to Vietnamese chữ nôm. Some Sawndip logograms were borrowed directly from Chinese, while others were created from the components of Chinese characters. Sawndip has been used for over one thousand years for various Zhuang dialects. Unlike Chinese, Sawndip has never been standardized and authors may differ in their choices of characters or spelling, and it is not currently part of the official writing system.

Modern Latin alphabet

In 1957, the People's Republic of China introduced an alphabetical script for the newly standardized Zhuang language. The alphabet was based on the Latin script, expanded with modified Cyrillic and IPA letters. A reform in 1982 replaced both the Cyrillic and IPA letters with Latin letters to facilitate printing and computer use.^[10] These alphabetical scripts are part of Standard Zhuang.

Letters in italics only represent tones. Letters in bold are only found in syllable codas.

Numerals

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Loanwords

A significant amount of Zhuang words are loaned from Chinese - around 30 to 40 percent in normal conversation, and almost every word regarding science, politics, or technology.^[8] Loans have come from Cantonese as well as other Chinese varieties. Compare Yue Chinese: 快, romanized: faai3, lit. 'fast' to Zhuang: vaiq, lit. 'fast' - much of Zhuang's basic wordstock has come from loans. However, it is difficult to determine if specific loanwords come from Middle Chinese or from Chinese varieties later on in history.