Proto-Norlokian language

The Proto-Norlokian language was the common ancestor of all Norlokian languages.

Phonology
The Proto-Norlokian language had three phonemic vowels, or six, if we count the long vowels as well, since the language had vowel-length distinction:. It isn't quite known, if these vowels had allophones depending on the kind of consonant they were following like in Old Dwarven: while it is generally viewed that at this stage, the palatalization and pharyngealization of consonants were far more audible on the consonant itself rather than the vowel that followed it, the fact that both Dwarven and Halfling developed allophonic vowel-colouring and eventually phonemicized these coloured vowels seems to indicate that feature possibly already existing in Proto-Norlokian.


 * The dark dorsal approximant must have been some kind of larynhgeal or uvular approximant, like in Old Dwarven.
 * The dorsal approximants were undefined for roundedness, pronounced as unrounded  before, rounded  before  and the archiphoneme .* The dark dorsal stops  could have been uvular stops  like in Old Dwarven, rather than larynhgealized velar stops
 * The exact articulation of the rhotics was unknown.
 * In Old Dwarven, the dark rhotic was a trill, the neutral rhotic  was a flap , the light rhotic  was an approximant
 * They could have been flaps with trilled allophones, which was the case in Old Halfling.
 * The exact articulation of the sibilants was unknown.
 * In Old Dwarven, neutral sibilants were hissing denti-alveolar sibilants, while both the dark and light sibilants were hushing apico-alveolar shibilants. Eventually, the latter evolved into retroflex and alveolo-palatal sibilants, while the earlier remained denti-alveolar.