Sani language

The Sani language is the language spoken by the Sani people. It has around 10 million speakers, mostly living in Talenore and Shireroth, with scattered communities in other nations. It is an official language in Talenore. Together with the Amarri language it constitutes the Cosimo-Benacian language family which is not related to any other known language family. Some linguists believe it to be the remnants of the languages spoken before the Istvanistani and Praeta speakers migrated to eastern Benacia. Sani is an agglutinative language with no grammatical gender and the simple basic syllable structure CV.

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Plosive	p | p'		t | t'			k | k'	q	ʔ
Nasal	m		n			ŋ
Trill			r̥ | r
Fricative			s | z	ʃ		x		h
Lateral			ɬ | l
Approximant				j		ʍ | w

Note: The plosives show regular form to the left and ejective form to the right. The trill, lateral and approximant with two forms show unvoiced to the left and voiced to the right.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	u
Open-Mid	e-ɛ		o-ɔ
Open		a

Each vowel comes in a short and a long version. Long vowels are only found in stressed syllables.

Phonotactics

Sani syllables consist of a mandatory onset consisting a consonant and a mandatory nucleus containing a vowel. The most common syllable is CV, but there are also CVV and CVN syllables, where N is any of the consonants /j/, /r/, /l/, /m/ or /n/. /ŋ/ only occurs word-final. This often affects the pronounciation of the initial consonant in the following syllable resulting in gemination or assimilation.