Souk

Souk (en. /suːk/, natively [pʰa.o.saˀ ↘sʉ.ək̚] , romanized phaosa su:k) is a Kai-Souk language of the Song language family, and the native language of the Kai people in Indochina. Like many languages of the region's sprachbund, Souk has been heavily influenced by Sanskrit and Pali; its liturgical register is composed of mainly Sanskrit and Pali loanwords, forgoing native words almost entirely. The language is notable for its complex system of honorifics and polite speech, with some linguists describing the language as having up to eight different grammatical registers.

Souk is a pitch-accent and mora-timed language. The language is primarily isolating; however, it employs many particles to express grammatical relationship and some infixes and suffixes in derivational morphology.

With 10 million native speakers, Souk is the most widely-spoken of the Song languages. There are competing theories for the classification of Song. The family bears many resemblances to the Austroasiatic languages, notably the existence of sesquisyllabic patterns and isolating morphology. However, linguists have been unable to adequately infer a genetic relationship to Mon-Khmer (synonymous with Austroasiatic) or its ancestors, due to many seemingly unrelated elements such as moraic-timing and an uncommon morphosyntactic alignment. The most likely case seems to be that proto-Song originally developed as a creole between proto-Mon-Khmer and an unknown native language.

Sound System
Souk phonology is more complex than that of Old Souk and its ancestors, especially concerning the vowels. The many tones which existed in Old Souk have transformed into new vowel phonemes. The phonetic system here best represents the phonemes as they are spoken around the Mekong River Delta, which is the dialect with the most speakers and which has been recognized by some linguists as a standard for the language. Some of the phonemes below have merged or diverged in other, especially rural, dialects.

Vowels
Long vowels occupy two morae. Any vowel other than 'ə' may be long, and length is phonemic. Vowel length was originally pure, with the long vowel remaining at the same place of articulation throughout; indeed this is preserved in rural dialects. In the so-called 'standard' dialect, however, the second half of a long vowel undergoes reduction, causing the long vowel to glide from its normal realization toward a more central position (nearer to 'ə'). Long rounded vowels are almost entirely unrounded by their end.

Thus /aː/ sounds like [a.ɐ], /iː/ sounds like [i.ɪ], and /ʉː/ like [ʉ.ə].

In Old Souk, consonant clusters would exist within a single syllable (along with a following vowel), such that a word like kmoo would be only one syllable in length. As the language began to become more mora-timed, the initial consonant in a cluster would be somewhat geminated. In modern Souk, which is entirely mora-timed, all consonant clusters are spread out over two morae. This is the role of the schwa [ə] in Souk: for stop consonants which cannot be properly geminated, [ə] is pronounced between the initial stop (plosive) consonant and the following cluster-forming consonant, producing an even moraic timing. The schwa sound in clusters has no pitch distinction and is never stressed.

Thus /k.mu/ is realized [kə.'mu], with far more emphasis on the second mora. No schwa is needed for non-plosive consonants, such that /m.ra/ is [m.ra], with the same duration on [m] as [ra].

Consonants

 * 1) Coda /ŋ/ remains velar in many dialects, but has become uvular among younger speakers, especially in more densely-populated areas. Initial /ŋ/ is always velar.
 * 2) Aspirated /tʰ/ sounds more like [cʰ] in the 'standard' dialect(s).
 * 3) Coda /d/ is not implosive, but an interdental approximant [ð̞].
 * 4) /h/ is closer to [ɸ] before rounded vowels or labial consonants.
 * 5) Unless /w/ is a semivowel at the end of a diphthong, it is closer to [β̞].

Pitch accent
The pitch accent system originally developed in Old Souk as a result of sound change. Early Old Souk and its parents were pitch-register languages, meaning that the various tones and phonation contrasts were dependent upon each other. Old Souk eventually began to lose its phonation contrast, such that it was left with many homophonic lexemes. The various contour tones of the early language began to merge with the flat tones, and thus only 3 tones remained: high falling, low falling, and middle rising. 95% of the high falling tones were on words with nasal endings, due to the former pitch-register system; thus the high falling tone assimilated into the middle rising tone. By the time the French began to found their colonies on the Samut Peninsula, the formerly three-tone system had become a pitch-accent system.

The modern pitch accent system is a global system. In a given clause, the accented syllable features a sudden drop in pitch, and following syllables continue to fall gradually in pitch, including particles, postpositions, and simple constituents (even if said syllables normally have middle pitch in isolation). This is why we usually describe a drop in pitch as a global fall.

1accented syllable

Skea
Old Souk allowed for virtually any consonant as well as some consonant clusters to exist in syllable coda. Due to the development of Old Souk as a more common, colloquial language, as well as the great influence of other local Austroasiatic languages, many of these coda phonemes merged with nasal consonants and unreleased stops. Words that underwent this merger developed a laryngealized sound, somewhat reminiscent of creaky voice or a glottal stop, which is pronounced just before the final consonant. This feature is known natively as skea [s.kɨˀ]; a word which, in Old Souk, would most likely have been pronounced [s.kɨh].

Romanization

 * Main article: Kai-Souk Colonial Alphabet