Dermian language

The Dermian language is the language of Clan Drmiah, spoken in the Empire of Neressa. It developed out of the Southern dialect of Old Etrandish, heavily influenced by the Middle Neressan language, and to a lesser extent by the Kobold language. Mostly an oral language rather than a written one, in rare cases when this language gets put onto ink, it is written with the Neressan alphabet.

Evolution from Southern Old Etrandish

 * Vowel shifts:
 * The Late Old Etrandish diphthongs simplified to long vowels, while  became  and  became.
 * Under the influence of Neressan, the short merged with  to create . Similarly, the short  lowered to.
 * The original Old Etrandish fully centralized to.
 * Consonant shifts:
 * The voiceless sonorants merged with their voiced equivalents.
 * The rhotic shifted to a uvular position  when followed by a vowel - it remained a coronal approximant  in non-prevocalic positions.
 * Under the influence of Middle Neressan, the velar became uvular, and new consonants were introduced to the language:.
 * Under the influence of Contemporary Neressan, and  merged as a new consonant, with the only exceptions being diphthongs ending with , like.

Consonants

 * The consonants, and  only exist in loanwords from Neressan.
 * can also surface as optional post-nasal allophones of in native words too.
 * can also surface as an optional post-vocalic allophone of in native words too.
 * The velar nasal is not a separate phoneme, but the allophone of  before velar consonants. Stand-alone  only occours word-finally in words that historically ended with.
 * The voiced labiodental fricative is the allophone of the voiceless labiodental fricative  before voiced consonants. Historical  and  have merged into one phoneme pronounced as  under the influence of Neressan.
 * The one and only rhotic consonant has two main allophones:
 * Uvular flap/trill when followed by a vowel
 * Heavily velarized or pharyngealized retroflex approximant when not followed by a vowel, e.g. word-finally or before a consonant. Alternatively just R-colouring of the preceding vowel.

Monophthongs

 * are not separate phonemes, but allophones of before non-prevocalic.
 * are central
 * vary between centralized front and truly central . They tend to be truly central after uvular the the uvular  and before non-prevocalic, and fronted otherwise.
 * With the exceptions of and, all vowels undergo shifts under the influence of non-prevocalic :

Diphthongs
With the exception of being illegal combinations, in theory, any short vowel  in the language can be combined with any of the two semivowels  to form a diphthong, resulting in 10 theoretically possible diphthongs  - in practice though, the only widely occurring diphthongs in the language are   and , with all of the other 8 possible diphthongs being either exceedingly rare, if not nonexistent.