Southern Etrandish dialect

Southern Etrandish is a dialect of the Etrandish language.

While traditionally considered to be a continuation of Old Southern Etrandish, it doesn't share too many - if any, actually - features with it, leading many to believe that only the Crainer dialect and the Dermian language are actually legitimate descendants of Old Southern Etrandish, while Contemporary Southern Etrandish may have its origins in later migrations to the south - this seems to correspond well with the fact, that the Southern Etrandish sub-race of Humans is also almost extinct in its pure form.

Subdialects


Southern Etrandish consists of between three and five subdialects, depending on the analysis and interpretation:
 * The Riverside & Coastal subdialect, spoken north of the River Golea, less than 50 kilometres south of the River Golea or less than 50 kilometres away from the coast. It is set apart from other subdialects by being rhotic, in contrast with...
 * ...the Deep Southern subdialect, which is non-rhotic.
 * The Deepest Southern subdialect is non-rhotic as well, but it uses a Uvular R.
 * The Crainer dialect is usually considered a subdialect of Southern Etrandish, though some consider it its own independent dialect due to preserving more features of Old Southern Etrandish, and lacking many of the features of the above-mentioned three subdialects.
 * The Copperport dialect is sometimes considered a part of the Southern dialect group, though it is more often considered either a subdialect of Eastern Etrandish or its own independent dialect. The strongest argument against grouping the Copperport dialect within the Southern dialect group is its Old Brevian substrate.

Phonology

 * Nasal vocalization.
 * Merger of and.
 * Merger of and.
 * This new phoneme usually surfaces as a stop word-initially and after nasals, and as a fricative / approximant / flap  everywhere else. Some speakers may consistently use a weak stop, (rarely) an affricate , or (even more rarely) a fricative.
 * The modally voiceless stops are either only weakly aspirated or completely unaspirated, in sharp contrast with other dialects that all aspirate the modally voiceless stops in prevocalic positions.
 * Modally voiced stops are consistently fully voiced.
 * Prevocalic is a dark . Non-prevocalic  is usually either vocalized  or silent Zero (linguistics).
 * Southern drawl: → ;  →  → ;  → ;  → ;  →, etc. The further south a dialect is, the stronger the drawl is. For example, the Talon-accent has a rather weak and un-marked drawl, with any accent south of the River Golea has a strong and marked drawl. Some aspiring speakers may be self-conscious about their drawl and employ hypercorrection, realizing  as ,  as , etc.
 * is consistently realized as an approximant, which may be elided when not prevocalic (non-rhotic).
 * The Riverside & Coastal subdialect is rhotic. As such, the Talon-accent is rhotic. Rhotic accents follow the Standard Etrandish pattern of vowel allophony, turning into R-coloured vowels or diphthongs.
 * The Deep Southern subdialect is non-rhotic. Non-rhotic accents lengthen short vowels before the silent, and replace the last element of diphthongs with a simple schwa, turning into . The long schwa is shortened  word-finally, lowered  otherwise.
 * The Deepest Southern subdialect uses a uvular approximant . All such subdialects are non-rhotic, and tend to replace with, when it's the second element of a diphthong.
 * Tendency to make silent. This is a very low-class feature that's only used by illiterate people.
 * Tendency to glottalize postvocalic to . This is a very low-class feature that's only used by illiterate people.
 * Adstratum with the Swamp Lizardman languages
 * To an extent, all varieties of Etrandish have loanwords from Lizardman, but mostly from the now-extinct Plains Lizardman
 * Just like in the case of Northern Etrandish and Dwarven, this influence is not one-sided, as the Swamp Lizardman langauges have also taken loanwords from (Southern) Etrandish, especially since the reign of King Tondbert I of Etrand.