Aushi, known by native speakers as Ikyaushi, is a Bantu language primarily spoken in the Lwapula Province of Zambia and the (Haut-)Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although many scholars argue that it is a dialect of the closely related Bemba, native speakers insist that it is a distinct language. Nonetheless, speakers of both linguistic varieties enjoy extensive mutual intelligibility, particularly in the Lwapula Province.^[4]

Aushi distinguishes consonants according to five manners and four places of articulation.^[4] Although nasal consonants are individually phonemic, prenasalized consonants also arise in conjunction with the voiced and voiceless counterparts of the plosives, affricates, and fricatives.^[4]

Aushi has five canonical vowels that are distinguished segmentally according to vowel height and backness and suprasegmentally according to length (short/long) and tone (low/high).^[4] The front and central vowels are unrounded, while the back vowels are rounded. In environments where vowels arise before a nasal consonant, the vowels may adopt nasality, but this is not a distinctive feature, i.e. it is phonetic, not phonemic.^[4]