Shár languages

The Shár language is considered the dominant language of the Shár Empire, but it is not a single unified language - dialectal differences have grown to the point of mutual unintelligibility.

Evolution from Old Shár

 * Vowel shift:
 * opens to in most contexts.
 * and merge as.
 * open to . Out of these, the earlier breaks into, pronounced as in most dialects (see historical shifts).
 * Tonogenesis: the code consonants develop into tones.
 * Consonant shift:
 * is devoiced
 * is become retroflex

Initials
Shár has 31 consonant phonemes in total, although most variants have more actual consonants than this - they are all allophones of one of these 31.
 * The best example is Imperial Shár, which palatalizes the velar to  before  and historical.
 * Some southern variants lose distinction between the alveolar and retroflex, usually (but not always) resulting in.
 * In every single variant of Shár, the lenis / unaspirated stop consonants are voiced when they are following a vowel or a nasal. In most variants - including Imperial Shár - intervocalic becomes  rather than.

To compare, here are the initials of Imperial Shár

In Imperial Shár is voiced/lenited to  between two vowels,  after nasals.

For the sake of analysis, the minimalistic phonological chart will be used, and the Imperial Shár will be analyzed as  or. Since the palatal sibilants can also originate in the palatalization of the alveolar sibilants, will be also used during analysis.

Finals
All Shár languages distinguish between at least six monophthongs - namely, , , , and  - but most variants also have ,  and. The latter three came from the fronting of, and  after  that did not occur in all variants. Additionally, most variants have lost, fronting it to or diphthongizing it to.

In the Shár languages, all syllables must have a main vowel. An initial consonant is optional, just as a glide is. The velar non-nasal consonants can be followed by an optional glide. All consonants could be historically followed by a glide, but most variants have lost it.

Last but not least, a syllable may optionally have a tone (falling tone or rising tone), or alternatively a coda-rhotic, a glide or , a nasal or an unreleased stop consonant. Some variants have lost the final stops and/or coalesced the vowels and the nasals into nasal vowels.

Historical shifts
Traditionally, Shár had 31 consonants and 6 vowels. However, historical shifts either increased or decreased this number.
 * The fronting of to  happened in Imperial Shár, as well as most variants, but not all of them. This increased the number of vowels from 6 to 9.
 * The palatalization of to  before  and  increased the number of consonants from 31 to 35 in Imperial Shár and most variants. This shift did not happened in all variants - the lack of palatalization of velars is the most marked feature of the Southern dialects.
 * The shift of to  also happened in Imperial Shár and nearly every other variant that underwent the palatalization of velars.
 * Imperial Shár - and most variants - dropped the glide after any consonant, phonemicizing the fronted vowels  and palatal consonants . This yod-dropping happened even in some dialects that did not undergo the fronting after  or the palatalization of velars.
 * Several dialects merged all the coda stops to
 * Several dialects delete all the coda nasals and replace it by nasalization of the preceeding vowel, for example shifting  to.
 * Some dialects delete the coda rhotic, but usually leave the effect the historical rhotic left on the vowel. For example, in Imperial Shár, are realized as . In dialects that drop the coda rhotic, the same phonemes are realized as.
 * Some - mostly southern - dialects lose distinction between the alveolar and retroflex, usually (but not always) resulting in.
 * A fairly recent shift in Imperial Shár and the southern dialects is the diphthongization of to  if there is nothing in the syllable coda - not even a tone. This shift has apparently happened much earlier in the south - where the remaining  got merged into  - and happened independently (and somewhat more recently) in the Ngor Rok dialect, which serves and Imperial Shár, which is based off it.

The best way to demonstrate this comparison is the name of the ruling dynasty itself, Jiuk, which is diaphonically, but is actually pronounced in Imperial Shár (hence the spelling Jiuk) - in other dialects, it can be pronounced , , , , , , , , , , ,  or.