Charnek Lizardman language

The Charnek Lizardman language is one of the spoken languages of the Free City of Charnek, and is special for being one of the few Lizardman languages that do not use the Lizardman cuneiforms, opting instead to use the Charnek script that is shared with the Charnek Kobold language. The language is heavily influenced by Gabyrian, which isn't surprising, given Charnek's close relationship with the Free City of Gabyr.

Evolution from Common Continental Lizardman

 * Vowel mergers:
 * and merge into one vowel phoneme, with  occurring before the coda-consonants,  everywhere else.
 * and merge as . Only the diphthong  remains.
 * is lowered to everywhere, except in the diphthong, which remains.
 * is lowered to everywhere, except in the diphthong, which remains.
 * The palatalization of to  before front vowels. The original, unpalatalized  appear before front vowels only in loanwords.
 * The merger of the nasal codas with the preceding vowels into new nasalized vowels.
 * become new syllabic nasals instead of the expected . From loanwords, the syllabic  is introduced too.

Phonology
Due to the chnages from its ancestor, as well as influence from other langauges - chiefly Kobold and Gabyrian -, the language's phonotactics have become a lot more permissive than that of its ancestor, therfore the old analysis of initials and finals no longer makes sense for the Charnek language.

Consonants

 * The glottal stop can only appear at the end of a syllable, never at the beginning of it. In loanwords, it is in complementary distribution with the stop consonants, all of those consonants surfacing as  when they aren't being followed by a vowel or a syllabic consonant.
 * The lenis consonants become voiced  when they are following a vowel or a syllabic consonant.
 * The consonants appear only in loanwords. Speakers will generally pronounce the latter correctly, but the earlier is mispronounced by the majority of speakers as either,  or.
 * The consonants can also be syllabic, although syllabic  only appears in loanwords.
 * is a Uvular approximant, and is considered a rhotic consonant, just like.

Monophthongs
The Charnek Lizardman language is made unnique among Lizardman languages by its inclusion of nasal vowels.


 * The vowel is not an independent phoneme, but an allophone of  before.

Tones
The oral monophthongs can also be accompanied by tones. The Charnek Lizardman language - just like every other Lizardman language has two tones: a rising tone and a falling tone.

These tones are fully phonemic and can modify the meaning of a word. Usage of the wrong tone will result in misunderstanding.