Shíd language

The Shíd language is a collection of closely related and mutually intelligible dialects that are spoken in the Kingdom of Shíd and neighbouring territories. It is divided into two main dialect groups: Coastal Shíd and Hills Shíd.

Monophthongs

 * has a varying degree of centralization, going from near-front to completely central, depending on the speaker
 * In the dialect of íjit, the capital city of Shíd, is only mildly centralized
 * - transcribed as - is a near-back near-close unrounded vowel.
 * varies between, , and , depending on dialect and speaker preference
 * In the dialect of íjit, the capital city of Shíd, the preferred pronunciation is the unrounded, making it unique, because this is generally a characteristic of Hills Shíd - in Coastal Shíd (except in Íjit), the rounded dominates.
 * varies between and, depending on dialect and speaker preference
 * In the dialect of íjit, the capital city of Shíd, is preferred.

Diphthongs

 * was traditionally pronounced as - and still is pronounced as such in most dialects - but in the Íjit dialect, as well as an increasing number of variants of Coastal Shíd,  is used instead.

Consonantal phonemes
Pronunciation of the unaspirated stops varies considerably between Coastal Shíd and Hills Shíd. For example:
 * the name of the language, kingdom and race itself, is pronounced  in Coastal Shíd,  in Hills Shíd
 * the word is pronounced  in Coastal Shíd,  in Hills Shíd

Coastal Shíd
Coastal Shíd is characterized by a much smaller amount of and less consistent medial lenition of unaspirated stops than Hills Shíd.
 * The unaspirated are voiced to voiced stops/affricates  after nasals stops.
 * Between vowels and before unaspirated stops...
 * are consistently voiced to
 * are lenited to
 * Word-finally and before aspirated stops...
 * pronounced as
 * are lenited to

Hills Shíd
Hills Shíd features a much more consistent lenition of unaspirated stops than its Coastal counterpart.
 * are voiced to after nasals
 * are lenited to between vowels and before unaspirated stops
 * are lenited and devoiced to word-finally and before aspirated stops.

"Standard" Shíd
The Shíd language has no written form, and the Shíd people are illiterate, therefore, there is no such thing as Standard Shíd. The closest equivalent to it is the dialect of Íjit, which has a prestige status.

The dialect of Íjit is part of the Coastal Shíd dialectal group, but has one unique feature that sets it apart from other Coastal Shíd dialects: the open back stressed vowel is pronounced as a rounded  in normal Coastal Shíd dialects, but it's pronunced as  in the Íjit dialect, just like in Hills Shíd dialects. Other than that one deviation, the Íjit dialect fits well into the other Coastal Shíd dialects with no other deviations.