Mangbetu dialects and locations as listed by Demolin (1992):[3] The vowels /a/, /ɛ/, /ɔ/, and /o/ can also be differentiated through quantity and be pronounced both long and short.
The two sets of vowels are differentiated by the vertical movement of the larynx, among other articulatory factors.
One unusual feature of Mangbetu is that it has both a voiced and a voiceless bilabial trill as well as a labial flap.
[7][8] The labial trills are not particularly associated with back vowels or prenasalization, pace their development in some American languages.
For example, the word ná-mutali, ‘fish,’ can be broken down into the segments ná-mu-t-a-li, containing the root -li, the characteristic vowel -a-, prefixes -t- and -mu-, and the singular marker ná-.
[6] Tonal variation plays a significant role in the language’s morphology, particularly in differentiating singular and plural nouns.