Sak language

The Sak langauge is the second branch of the Limjiang language family besides Shár. It is currently official in the six Sak states - Ryung, Shit, Räl, Gyô, and Mô - which are all vassals of the Shár Empire.

Evolution from Old Sak

 * Distinction was lost between voiceless unaspirated (tenuis) and voiced (lenis) stops and affricates, with voicing becoming purely allophonic.
 * The affricates became palatalized  before  and, deaffricated to  everywhere else.
 * respectively became.
 * The diphthongs monophthongized
 * The clusters simplified

Syllable structure

 * All syllables must have a vowel within it.
 * Initial consonants are optional. No syllable may start with the glottal stop or the velar nasal  - those two consonants may only appear in the coda.
 * Optionally, a syllable may also have a glide or  in it.
 * Medial may only exist after, and these combinations coalesce into
 * Medial may not exist after  - historically,  merged with, while  never existed in native Sak vocabulary.
 * + coalesce into
 * A syllable may optionally end with a consonant.
 * Coda consonants may not follow long vowels, as those came from historical diphthongs or a now-lost coda -  came from  and,  came from  and ,  came from.

Consonants

 * and are not separate phonemes but allophones of the same phoneme: the liquid phoneme  is pronounced as a flap  in the syllable onset, a lateral approximant  in the syllable coda. Many male speakers also use the trilled, especially in aggressive speech and cursing.
 * The lateral tends to be heavily velarized.
 * When a syllable ends with and the following syllable begins with, the combination may be pronounced either  or , depending on speaker preference.
 * Out of all the consonants, only may appear in the syllable coda.
 * The unaspirated become voiced  medially.
 * The combination of with  and  coalesce into palato-velar  and labio-velar  stops.
 * The combination of with  and  coalesce into dorso-palatal  and labiodental  fricatives.
 * The coda-position stops are phonologically unaspirated, and become voiced  when followed by a syllable that starts with a vowel, nasal or unaspirated stop (which also becomes voiced).
 * The coda stop becomes  when the following syllable starts with.

Vowels

 * The long near-open back vowel is often not fully rounded.
 * In Southern Sak, it is pronounced as a fully rounded (protruded).
 * In Northeastern Sak, it is pronounced as a compressed.
 * In Northwestern Sak, it is pronounced as a weakly rounded (protruded).