Klai

Klai (pronounced /kˡaj/) is a Klai-Souk language of the greater Song language family. Klai is the official language of Kambar, a country in Southeast Asia bordering Cambodia and Vietnam, and the native language of the Klai people. Klai is an isolating, phonation-contrasted, tonal and syllable-timed language with Subject-Verb-Object word order. It is written using the Klai Script, which is related to the Thai and Khmer scripts, and ultimately derived from the Brāhmī scripts of ancient India.

Phonology
Klai is a syllable-timed language: each syllable receives the same amount of emphasis and/or stress as the last, whether short or long. Tone is a phonemic feature of Klai, meaning that two identical words can be distinguished solely by difference in tone.

Consonants
Plosive consonants (minus /ʔ/) carry three levels of contrast: voiceless, voiced, and lateral-released. The lateral-released plosives can be best described as positioning the mouth to make /l/, but making a plosive. Note that the lateral-released plosives are always voiceless.

/ð/ only appears in word-coda. It is more approximant than fricative; the tongue is in the proper position, but no air is blown (unreleased) /ɬ/ was originally lateral-released /sˡ/, but now closer resembles /ɬ/ Clusters can appear word initially as CG (C = any consonant except /ɾ, l, ɬ, j, w, ʔ/ and lateral-released; G = /ɾ, w, j, m, n, ɲ/) Any nasal can also from a cluster as N(ɾ); eg. /mɾul/, /ɲɾõm/ /m, n, ɲ, ŋ, p, b, t, c, k, ɾ, l, ʔ/ are permitted for syllable coda; all plosives are unreleased stops when in coda

Vowels
All vowels can be short or long, and vowel length is phonemic; there are 18 total monophthongs Diphthongs are permitted as the j-diphthongs (/ʉj, uj, ej, ɛj, o̞j, aj/) and the w-diphthongs /ɨw, iw, ew, ɛw, aw/ The diphthong /ea/ is the only "true" diphthong; it is realized by many speakers as [ɨə] or [eə] (Khmer influence)

Tone
The only "true" tones of Klai are the middle and low tones. The other tones are in fact phonation constrasts: creaky voice, breathy voice, and nasalized; each one of these phonation constrasts usually receives a middle tone. For the sake of explanation, these constrasts along with the true tones are normally described as tones. Here is a list of the five tones: