and  are high front unrounded vowels. These are close to Hindi-Urdu  as in milna: 'to meet' and  as in asli: 'real'. They are also like the vowels in English bit and beat, respectively.

In Kashmiri  and  are in free-variation with palatalized glides yi and yi: in initial position. In initial position  and  are found in the speech of educated Kashmiri speakers, while yi and yi: have a high frequency in the speech of uneducated Kashmiris. This may be partly due to the influence of Hindi-Urdu.

Examples: