East-A Altaic'

A more conservativ subfamily of East Altaic', spoken in NW Himalayas.

Some sound changes from Proto-East Altaic':

• ʈ → q, ʂ → s
• ɪ ʊ → ə → ʌ
• ɜ → ∅ (generally)
• æ → e, je, ɑ varyingly
• i u → e o / _q(ʷ)
• loss of labialized uvulars (merging into labiovelars or plain uvulars)
• prenasalization drops
• ɢ → ʁ → ∅, h
• β → v
• labialized velars → labial-velars
• stop lenition k q → x χ, similar to West
  • these generally then collapse to a single phoneme /x/ with a possible allophone [χ] before back vowels; the front allophone may shift → h
  • in a few branches also p → f
  • labiovelars unaffected
  • this change seems to be younger than the Western one by a minimum of 1.5 ka, possibly as much as 3 ka - a slo diffusion thru pre-Altaic' languages of south-central Asia (of especially Klusterax, but possibly also Persian' and extinct families) is possible, but another choice would be "rub-off" from the alternation's systematic employment in acrolectal Old Sadabax.
• fricativ voicing intervocally

A typical phoneme system is (phonemes only occuring in few languages in parentheses):

	Labial	Dental / alveolar	Post- alveolar	Velar	Labial- velar	Uvular / glottal
Voiceless stops	p	t	ʧ	k	kp	q
Voiced stops	b	d	ʤ	ɡ	ɡb
Voiceless fricativs	(f)	s	ʃ	(x)		h
Voiced fricativs	v	z	ʒ	(ɣ)
Nasals	m	n		ŋ	ŋm
Approximants		l	r       j		w

	Front	Lax	Back
Hi	i	(ɪ ~ ɨ)	u
Mid	e	ʌ	o
Lo	a ~ ɑ