Wood Elven dialects

The Wood Elven language is the first Elven language have recorded evidence about dialects, dating back to the Archaic Wood Elven period. Do keep in mind that this article only covers the dialects in the Dragoc variant of Wood Elven. The Artaburro variant does not have dialects with notable phonological differences and is relatively uniform.

Historically

 * During the Archaic Wood Elven the original labio-velar merged with the bilabial, as opposed to Standard Wood Elven which delabialized them to  during the Classical High Elven period. This explains why a lot of names and words in this dialect have  instead of the standard.
 * The shift from to  started in this dialect earlier than in the rest of Dragoc, already in the late Archaic Wood Elven period, while the process was only completed in the rest of Dragoc during the early Classical High Elven period.

Currently

 * For historical reasons (see above), words that historically had in Archaic Wood Elven have  in this dialect instead of the standard.
 * Instead of the long vowels, diphthongs are used. Some speakers may even use
 * The long is backed and R-coloured to  word-finally. Speakers of other dialects mock the Northern dialect by calling it "Aru-dialect".
 * Between a back / central vowel and a front vowel, is usually dropped and replaced by either  or by a lengthening of vowel following it. For example,  and  become  and.
 * is pronounced as a voiced retroflex fricative, a sound unique to this dialect occurring in no other variant of Wood Elven.
 * does not have palatal allophones before -  is pronunced as  and  is stretched into  - but instead,  is realized as velar  before,  and.

Historically
The dialect of Western Dragoc has always served as the basis for Standard Wood Elven ever since the Archaic Wood Elven era, it in no way deviated from Standard usage historically.

Currently

 * Authentic Western Dragoc speech - as opposed to the Standard pronounciation based off it - is a lot more liberal with monophthongization of diphthongs: the diphthongs and  are monophthongized to, in addition to the historical mergers of  and  to ,  and  to  and  to.
 * is shifted to
 * The long is a laxed.

Historically

 * During the Archaic Wood Elven period, the labio-velar and palato-velar  were realized as fricatives . During the Classical High Elven period, they became . When Classical High Elven gave way to Current High Elven,  merged with, while  became.
 * Other than the triphthong and diphthong  - which became  and  - the Eastern Dragoc dialect preserved the diphthongs  in their original forms rather than turning them into long monophthongs.

Currently

 * Due to historical reasons (see above), dialectal vocabulary has in place of standard  in words that had  in Archaic Wood Elven.
 * Due to historical reasons (see above), dialectal vocabulary has diphthongs in place of standard.
 * Intervocalic is pronounced as  instead of.
 * Word-initial is usually pronounced as.
 * is pronounced as a palatal before all front vowels and a velar  before back and central vowels other than .  is pronounced )

Historically

 * During the Classical High Elven period, consistently became, not just before
 * During the Classical High Elven period, the diphthong monophthongized to, which got unrounded and merged with  in at the end of the Classical period.

Currently

 * For historical reasons (see above), words that have the diphthongs and  in Standard High Elven have the long vowels  and  instead.
 * Unlike Standard Wood Elven which merged and, the four long vowels remained completely distinct in the Southern dialect.  and  are written  and.
 * The shibilant fricative is realized as a retroflex .  and  remain alveolo-palatal.