ABSTRACT
The chapter is organized into two major sections, on vowels and consonants, with a shorter section on prosody. There are many important interactions between these three aspects of phonetic structure and some of these will be taken up at the point where it seems appropriate to do so. For example, the Bantu languages provide very striking examples of vowels affecting consonant realizations, particularly considered diachronically, and the nature of particular segments also has significant impacts on prosodic quantity and on tonal patterns. It is hoped that the brief discussions of selected issues here will encourage more attention to be paid to phonetic aspects of these languages.
