[5] Although an accurate description of the phonology of Chimila is yet to be produced, a preliminar sketch can be found in Trillos Amaya's (1997) grammar.

Plain voiced and prenasalized stops and affricates have been shown to contrast, e.g. kaː "breast", gaː "excrement" and ᵑgaː "wing, feather".

In general, lenis consonants, except for prenasalized ones, /x/, /ɾ/ and /w/, are realized as fortis whenever they follow the stressed syllable.

[8][3] In early twentieth century, anthropologist Dolmatoff (1947) was able to collect an extensive sample of Chimila words.

The following table shows some basic vocabulary items of the language:[9] A provisional writing system has been developed by the Summer Institute of Linguistics.