Editing Sandawe language (section)

===Vowels===
[[File:Sandawe vowel chart.svg|thumb|Sandawe vowel chart, from {{Harvcoltxt|Eaton|2006|p=237}}]]

Sandawe has five vowel qualities:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
|-
!
! [[Front vowel|Front]]
! [[Back vowel|Back]]
|-
! [[Close vowel|Close]]
| {{IPA link|i}}
| {{IPA link|u}}
|-
! [[Mid vowel|Mid]]
| {{IPA link|e}}
| {{IPA link|o}}
|-
! [[Open vowel|Open]]
| colspan=2 | {{IPA link|a}}
|}

All five vowel qualities may be found as short oral, long oral and long nasal vowels. Thus /a/ can be found as {{IPA|/a/}}, {{IPA|/aː/}} and {{IPA|/ãː/}} respectively. There are therefore fifteen basic vowel phonemes. Short nasal vowels also occur, apparently from the historical elision of a nasal consonant that is still attested in related forms. Long vowels are written double, {{lang|sad|aa}}, and long nasal vowels with a tilde, {{lang|sad|ã}}.

Long vowels are about 50% longer than short vowels. In morpheme-final position, low-tone {{IPA|/u/}} and {{IPA|/i/}} are frequently devoiced, though this may not occur after {{IPA|/j/}}, {{IPA|/w/}}, or {{IPA|/h/}}.