Proto-Halfling language

Proto-Halfling was the ancestor of the Halfling language and its various dialects. Since the Halfling language is quite conservative in its grammar, and hasn't had too many sound shifts in the last millenium, it is difficult to exactly pinpoint where does Proto-Halfling end and a form of Halfling that could be described as "close enough to the contemporary" begin, although the definite point of transition is usually put at the 9th century BEKE, when the proto-language fragmented into clearly recognizeable dialects that still remain mutually intelligible to this day.

Evolution from Proto-Norlokian

 * The Old Halfling vowel-split:
 * The Proto-Norlokian vowels became  after light consonants
 * The Proto-Norlokian vowels became  after neutral consonants
 * The Proto-Norlokian vowels became  after dark consonants
 * The original Proto-Norlokian light-neutral-dark three-way distinction for consonant variants was lost, resulting in the mergers of as,  as , etc. however...
 * The original, and  became a new class of shibilants.
 * The dorsal approximants became silent. The only exception was coda-position, which was vocalized to a vowel . Their labialized counterparts  all merged as , which was vocalized  in coda positions.
 * The plosives developed fricative allophones  in postvocalic positions. Out of these, those voiceless fricatives that weren't phonemic already became phonemicized eventually . Their voiced equivalents never phonemicized.

Consonants

 * The voiced fricatives were allophones of the voiced stops  in postvocalic positions. Unlike their voiceless equivalents, they never phonemicized.
 * With the exception of the sibilants, the voiceless fricatives were originally allophones of the voiceless stops  in postvocalic positions. Unlike their voiced equivalents, they eventually did phonemicize and become independent phonemes.
 * Eventually, the voiceless dental fricative disappeared from all variants of Halfling, but what happened to it varied from dialect to dialect:
 * In some dialects, it hardened back to.
 * In some dialects, it merged into the sibilant.
 * In some dialects, it was debuccalized to either a glottal fricative or stop.
 * The glottal stop always eventually became silent.
 * The glottal fricative either became silent  or merged with.
 * In varieties of Halfling spoken in Etrand, the voiceless dental fricative was eventually reintroduced via loanwords from Old Etrandish and Classical Dwarven, still remaining absent from native words.

Vowels

 * The vowels eventually disappeared from all dialects.  disappeared from most dialects, but not all of them.
 * In dialects that lost them, eventually became, except after , where they became  instead
 * In all dialects, eventually became, except after , where they became  instead.
 * merged with either or, depending on the dialect.