The sound conventionally transcribed with the letter འ (Wylie: 'a) was a voiced velar fricative, while the voiceless rhotic and lateral are written with digraphs ཧྲ ⟨hr⟩ and ལྷ ⟨lh⟩.

This allows for complicated syllables like བསྒྲིགས bsgrigs "arranged" and འདྲྭ 'drwa "web", for which the pronunciations [βzɡriks] and [ɣdrʷa] can be reconstructed.

The features of palatalization /i̯/ [Cʲ] and labialization /w/ [Cʷ] can be considered separate phonemes, realized as glides in G1 and G2 respectively.

[7] The sounds written with the palatal letters ཅ c, ཇ j, ཉ ny, ཞ zh, and ཤ sh were palatalized counterparts of the phonemic sounds ཙ ts, ཛ dz, ན n, ཟ z, and ས s.[8] Case markers are affixed to entire noun phrases, not to individual words (i.e. Gruppenflexion).

The second person pronouns include two singulars ཁྱོད་ khyod and ཁྱོ(ན)་འདའ་ khyo(n)-'da' and a plural ཁྱེད་ khyed.