Phonology

Vowels

Vowels
	Front		Central		Back
	long	short	long	short	long	short
Close	i (i)	í (ɪ)			u (u)	ú (ʊ)
Mid		e (ɛ)	ô (ə ~ ʌ)	o (ɔ)
Open		â (æ)			a (ɑ)
Diphthongs	ei (eɪ) ai (aɪ) oi (ɔɪ) au (aʊ) ou (oʊ)

Consonants

Consonants
	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Plosive	p b (p b)	t d (t d)		k g (k g)
Affricate		ts (t͡s)
Fricative		s z (s z)		gy (ɣ)
Nasal	m (m)	n (n)		ng (ŋ)
Approximant		r l (ɹ l)	y (j)	w (w)

Phonotactics

Syllables can take the following forms:

V
CV
NSV
SwV

where V = vowel, C = consonant, N = the nasal vowels /m n/, and S = a stop or the consonants /s z ts/. Stress, which can be marked with the acute accent, always falls on the penultimate syllable of the core word except in the case of ô, where it will fall on the following one.

In instances where an impermissable cross-syllable consonant cluster may form an intersyllabic -e- is added; hiatus occurs in the case of vowel clusters.

Nouns

Nouns are inflected for plurality, case, and augmentative/diminutive: case|noun|dim/aug|plurality. For example: bangómbonyosə 'by the small cities'.

Noun classes

Ngudu has eight noun classes.

class	semantics	prefix	example	translation
1	the supernatural, abstractions, power	o-/ng-/ngu-	ngudundo	spirit
2	people, animals	m-/mo-	mtulu	pest
3	plants, edible things	mb-/mbi-	mbimbə	mushroom
4	hard things, geographical features	i-/s-/so-	songu	river
5	soft things	w-/wa-	waturu	water
6	made objects	mz-/mzo-	mzogo	knife
7	collective things	e-/ng-/ngo-	ngombo	city
8	miscellany	nd-/ndə-	ndəmədaku	crown

Animal parts prepared for food fall into class 3, not class 2 (monbo 'fish' vs mbinbo 'fish flesh'). Class 7 nouns are known as collective nouns and are not inherently plural (for example, ngotwi 'forest' is derived from mbitwi 'tree'). Loanwords usually fall into class 8 despite their appropriateness in other categories, (hence ndəmədaku 'crown' rather than mzom?daku from Roan 'medac' of the same meaning).

Cases

Ngudu has a simple case system:

case	suffix
nominative	Ø
accusative	tsa-
locative	ta-
proximative	ba-

Other affixes

Plurals are simply with the suffix -sə. Ngudu also features the augmentative -zu and the diminutive -nyo.

Verbs

Moods

Mood	Infix
Indicative	-so-
Energetic	-ogo-
Dubitative	-mtse-
Interrogative	-ku-
Imperative	-Ø-

Aspect

Aspect	Infix
Continuous	-pu-
Perfective	-wə-
Imperfective	-nya-
Frequentative	-le-
Continuous	-nti-
Prospective	-raz-
Terminative	-isu-
Continuative	-gəb-

Tense

Tense	Infix
Distant past	-des-
Recent past	-to-
Present	-Ø-
Near future	-tur-
Distant future	-tutur-

Person

Ngudu has a rather extensive system of personal prefixes which inflect for the class of the noun which is being modified as well as paucal plurality and "ordinary" plurality. Fortunately, the singular prefixes are identical to the noun classes to which they refer while paucal with simple vowel shifts, generally towards the back, while plurals were formed with shifts towards the closed front, accompanied by devoicing.

	1st	2nd	Class 1	Class 2	Class 3	Class 4	Class 5	Class 6	Class 7	Class 8
Singular	mi-	yu-	o-	mbo-	mbi-	i-	wa-	mzo-	ngo-	ndə-
Paucal	usə-	tu-	a-	mba-	mbə-	ə-	wu-	mza-	nga-	nda-
Plural	usi-	ti-	u-	mpi-	mpe-	e-	wə-	msə-	nkə-	nti-

Other types of pronouns

Intensive pronouns can be formed by combining the relevant prefix with the suffix -yo (oyo, mboyo, etc).

Motion verbs

Verbs describing motion are inflected based on where they occur relative to the speaker based on Cartesian coordinates whereby x, y, z are conceptualized as right, up, and forward, respectively, while -x, -y, -z are their inverses. In addition, these verbs can also inflect for motion such as oscillation and circulation. Plural-only inflections exist for convergence, division, and scattering.