Gold language
The Gold language (also cvalled Diʕì) was spoken around 1900 AD along the south coast of Rilola as well as the homelands of the left-behinds on Fox Island. It is the parent language uniting all Khulls, Thaoa, and Poswa/Pabappa speaking populations.
POhonology
Consonants
There were labialized consonants in Gold, but they are not considered phonemic because unlike in Khulls and Poswa, they can only occur bnefore a vowel. Thus it is better to consider this as simply a /w/ inserted between a syllable onset and its nucleus. THis also means /w/ itself is phonemic rather than being considered, as in Khulls, just an allophone of /ʕʷ/. THus, with labialized consonants ignored, the setup is:
- /p b m w t d n s z l č ǯ j k ġ ŋ h g ḳ/
The velar ejective ḳ is the only ejective in the language, although the clusters /pḳ/ and /tḳ/ could occur, even word-initially, leading to marginal phonemes /ṗ/ and /ṭ./ More commonly, however, /ṗ/ and /ṭ/ also appear as allophones of /ḳ/ after the syllabic nasals /ṁ/ and /ṅ/.
- Final consonants
The final consonants are /k ḳ l n s ʕ/. Syllabic consonants /ṁ ṅ ŋ̇/ do, however, exist.
Vowels
- /a i u ə/
Tones
Tones were not well developed in Gold. Syllables could be high or low, and since there were no long vowels, this is all the possibilities that existed. Note that high tone is Romanized with a grave accent, as in à, to keep in line with its descendants where this tone develops a final glottal stop.
Although there were only two tones, vowel sequences like àa and aà were becoming more common, and this is what led to the long tones of Khulls and its descendants, which are spelled ā and á respectively. Long tones also existed in Thaoa and Poswa but died out. The àa ~ ā type is much more common than aà ~ á. These could also occur with diphthongs, but only on the ā tone. That is, ài was common but aì was entirely absent, even over morpheme boundaries.
Descendants
ORdered roughky from west to east:
