The language has also gone by several other names in English, including chiYao or ciYao (the prefixed form), Achawa, Adsawa, Adsoa, Ajawa, Ayawa, Ayo, Ayao, Djao, Haiao, Hiao, Hyao, Jao, Veiao, and waJao.

In each of the main three countries where Yao is spoken, the orthography differs widely, and there is a low literacy rate.

The Malawian form uses the following characters: Macrons can be used to prevent ambiguity that would otherwise arise due to the lack of representation of vowel length.

Like all Bantu languages, Yao is agglutinative, with a highly regular paradigm of verbal inflection, and its nouns placed in a variety of classes indicated by prefixes, these partially corresponding to actual categories of objects or people.

The convention of including classes 16, 17 and 18 deviates from the traditional Bantu system, their prefixes being more properly prepositional or case determiners.

There are affirmative and negative forms of the verb, each with approximately the following divisions: As in many Bantu languages, this is characterised by an ending 'a'.

These pronouns, as a common Bantu feature, are absolute, in that they stand alone from the rest of the sentence: for nominative accusative and prepositional forms, affixes must be used.