Ingrian phonology

The spoken Ingrian language remains unstandardised, and as such statements below are about the four known dialects of Ingrian (Ala-Laukaa, Hevaha, Soikkola and Ylä-Laukaa) and in particular the two extant dialects (Ala-Laukaa and Soikkola).
The written forms are, if possible, based on the written language (referred to as "kirjakeeli", "book language") introduced by the Ingrian linguist in the late 1930s. Following 1937's mass repressions in the Soviet Union, the written language was abolished and ever since, Ingrian doesn't have a (standardised) written language.
Vowels.
The following chart shows the monophthongs present in the Ingrian language:
All vowels can occur as both short () and long (). The long vowel is extremely rare, occurring in borrowed words like "rььžo" ("red-haired"). The vowels are often realised as either diphthongs () or diphthongoids () and in some dialects even as .
Vowel reduction.
Vowel reduction is a very common feature of the Ala-Laukaa dialect, and is to a very restricted extent also present in Soikkola. The term refers to the process of acoustically weakening the unstressed vowels.
In Soikkola, vowel reduction is restricted to the vowels "a" and "ä"; These vowels are sometimes reduced to , but mostly in quick speech, making it a purely phonetic feature:
In Ala-Laukaa, this process is much more common. In open final syllables, the vowels are reduced to , the other vowels () are simply shortened (). The process of reducing vowels is contrastive in Ala-Laukaa:
In a closed final syllable, the reduction of the vowel is much more uncommon, and occurs primarily in polisyllabic words. In words with three syllables and a long third syllable (in the form CVV), the penultimate syllable will reduce in the same way as described above. In three-syllable words with a short final syllable (in the form (C)CV), however, any short vowel in the second syllable will be reduced to . In polysyllabic words, reduction of the even syllables don't occur before short syllables.
The reduced vowels in Ala-Laukaa Ingrian can further experience deletion:
Vowel harmony.
Ingrian, just like its closest relatives Finnish and Karelian, has the concept of vowel harmony. The principle of this morphophonetic phenomenon is that vowels in a word consisting of one root are all either front or back. As such, no native words can have any of the vowels {a, o, u} together with any of the vowels {ä, ö, y}.
To harmonise formed words, any suffix containing one of these six vowels have two separate forms: a front vowel form and a back vowel form. Compare the following two words, formed using the suffix "-kas": "liivakas ("sandy") from "liiva" ("sand") and "iäkäs ("elderly") from "ikä" ("age").
The vowels {e, i} are considered neutral and can co-occur with both types of vowels. However, stems with these vowels are always front vowel harmonic: "kivekäs" ("rocky") from "kivi" ("rock").
Compound words don't have to abide by the rules of vowel harmony, since they consist of two stems: "rantakivi" ("coastal stone") from "ranta" ("coast") + "kivi" ("stone").
Consonants.
The consonantal phonology of Ingrian varies greatly among dialects. For example, while Soikkola Ingrian misses the voiced-unvoiced distinction, it has a three-way consonant length distinction, missing in the Ala-Laukaa dialect.
Soikkola dialect.
Consonant length.
In the Soikkola dialect, consonants have a three-way distinction in length. Geminates can be either short (1.5 times the length of a short consonant) or long (twice the length of a short consonant):
A similar phenomenon can be observed in the related Estonian language.
Ala-Laukaa dialect.
Palatalisation.
In the Ala-Laukaa dialect, phonetic palatalisation of consonants in native words occurs first of all before the vowels {y, i} and the approximant :
The palatalised and may both be realised as by some speakers. Furthermore, palatalisation before and that have developed from an earlier * or * respectively is rare:
This same phenomenon is noticed in the extinct Ylä-Laukaa dialect:
Prosody.
Stress.
Stress in Ingrian falls on the first syllable in native words, but may be shifted in loanwords. An exception is the word "paraikaa" (, "now"), where the stress falls on the second syllable. Secondary stress falls on odd-numbered syllables or occurs as a result of compounding and isn't phonemic.