Like most Athabaskan languages, Apache shows various levels of animacy in its grammar, with certain nouns taking different verb forms from others according to their rank in this animacy hierarchy.
Apache's phonology is very similar to that of Navajo. It has four vowels a, e, i and o, and these may all be nasalised, long, high in tone or combinations of the three.
The consonants of the western dialect of Apache are as follows:
Stop Fricative Affricate Approximant Nasal Bilabial b w m Alveolar d t t' z s dz ts ts' n Alv. lateral lh dl tl tl' l Postalveolar zh sh j ch ch' y Velar g k k' gh x* Velar labial kw ghw xw Glottal ' h*Some dialects of Apache include Jicarilla, Lipan, Kiowa-Apache, Chiricahua, Mescalero and Western Apache. Lipan and Kiowa-Apache are nearly extinct. Western Apache has a number of subdialects: Cibeque, Northern and Southern Tonto, San Carlos and White Mountain.* /x/ and /h/ are allophones; this is typical of the United States Athabaskan languages.
An Apache dictionary (Western Apache-English Dictionary: A Community-Generated Bilingual Dictionary) was recently published by Dorothy Bray and the White Mountain Apache Tribe in 1998. Some of the classification and pronunciation information has been challenged, but this remains the best reference available at present.