Souk

Souk (normally [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. The language is notable for its complex system of honorifics and polite speech, and some linguists describe the language as having up to eight different grammatical registers. Like many languages of Indochina, 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.

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.

General information
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 bears resemblance to the phonetic features of the Mainland Southeast Asia sprachbund, such as the presence of an aspirated/unaspirated contrast, palatal and implosive consonants. The language also has a complicated vowel system with several vowel phonemes, however these are often difficult for L2 speakers to differentiate from one another in even proper speech (such as in newscasts). In the more formal registers, especially the liturgical register, speakers imitate the so-perceived 'proper' phonology of Sanskrit and Pali (from which most words are borrowed in these registers) to the point that even native words or words not of Indic origin end up sounding more like these languages than proper Souk.

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