Pepetoka languages

The Pepetoka languages is a group of genetically unrelated languages that are spoken by the Pepetoka people. Besides some shared vocabulary, they don't have much in common, and are only grouped together for biological and cultural reasons.

History and groups
The Pepetoka languages can be neatly divided into three subgroups:
 * the Qanďuḱara branch, which are considered the "baseline Pepetoka", as most foreigners - especially from the Occident - typically interact with only Qanďuḱara-speakers, if they interact at all with Pepetoka
 * the Brufule branch, which lack the subapical consonants
 * the Cat'aq branch and various isolates, which typically lack voiced stops and affricates, but feature ejectives.

It's important to note, that these three groups don't necessarily imply genetical relationship, and might be more apropriately called Sprachbunds than actual language families. This especially holds true for the Cat'aq branch of Pepetoka languages, which are mostly unrelated isolates grouped together by shared features. In contrast, there is slightly more evidence for the Qanďuḱara and Brufule branches evolving out of two respective proto-languages.



The Brufule branch of Pepetoka languages was originally spoken in the northern part of the Reyang peninsula, roughly corresponding with the location of the Empire of Týrýng - when the Týrýng arrived, Brufule-speakers were practically genocided and racailly cleansed from their own homeland, creating a wave of refugees fleeing their homelands. These refugees ended up expanding into the southeast at the expense of Qanďuḱara-speakers, who in turn would later begin expanding at the expense of Cat'aq-speakers.

Shared phonetical system
Due to the unique anatomy of the Pepetoka people, they make different consonantal sounds than various other humanoid races do because their flexible frog tongues curl back easily, a three-way distinction is made between laminal, apical and subapical consonants for every place of articulation - such as labial (actually linguolabial) and dorsal - rather than just coronal consonants. Laminal, apical and subapical consonants also colour surrounding vowels.

It is important to note, that the Brufule branch of the Pepetoka languages lacks subapical consonants.

Superset of Pepetoka base consonantal phonemes
It is important to note that most Pepetoka languages only contain a fraction/subset of these consonantal phonemes. For instance, the Brufule languages lack the subapical consonants, the Cat'aq languages lack voiced stops and affricates (but instead have ejectives), the Qanďuḱara langauges tend to eschew lateral affricates, etc.

While the Pepetoka are physically capable of pronouncing (linguo)labial affricates, coronal fricatives and voiced dorsal stops, no Pepetoka language contains them natively. The few that do contain them, still restrict their presence to loanwords only.

Pepetoka vowels
If we disregard vowel-length distinctions and tones - some Pepetoka languages have both - all Pepetoka languages effectively have three basic vowels, which get to be coloured by surrounding consonants.


 * Pepetoka are incapable of true lip-rounding, but they can still articulate vowels that sound rounded to human ears, despite being unrounded.