Behalavian language

Behalavian (Behalavian: бехалавскi язик, behalavski jazyk) is a and is the official  of Behalavia. It has been influenced by Cozar Slavic, Kadolhan, Vretekan, and Cestrosian due to geographical proximity and cultural exchange via contact and trade. The language is organised as South Slavic based on its reflexes and evolution alongside Cozar Slavic and Kadolhan (See Phonology §Reflexes). The characteristic difference from Behalavian and other Southwestern Slavic languages is the level of retention relative to thereof, most notably, the retention of palatalisation which is found in other Slavic languages such as Lipnitian, Kusian, etc.

Consonants
The consonant system of Behalavian has 30 phonemes. Like most other Slavic languages such as Lipnitian, there is palatalized versus non-palatalized (hard–soft) contrast for most consonants.

Vowels
The Behalavian vowel system is symmetrically composed of five vowel qualities /a, e, i, o, u/. Although the difference between long and short vowels is phonemic, it is not represented in standard orthography, except in dictionaries. Unstressed vowels are shorter than the stressed ones by 30% (in the case of short vowels) and 50% (in the case of long vowels). Stressed vowels carry one of the two basic tones, rising and falling. (See Phonology §Pitch accent)

Pitch accent

Behalavian allows two tones on stressed syllables and have distinctive vowel length and so distinguish four combinations, called pitch accent: short falling (ȇ), short rising (ė), long falling (ẽ), and long rising (ē).

Accent alternations are very frequent in inflectional paradigms, in both quality and placement in the word (the so-called "", which were present in itself and became much more widespread in ). Different inflected forms of the same lexeme can exhibit all four accents: lȯnac ('pot' nominative sg.), lōnca  (genitive singular), lõnci  (nominative plural), lȏnácá  (genitive plural).

Research done has shown that all stressed syllables of Behalavian words are basically spoken with a high tone and that native speakers rely on the phonetic tone of the first post-tonic syllable to judge the pitch accent of any given word. If the high tone of the stressed syllable is carried over to the first post-tonic syllable, the accent is perceived as rising. If it is not, the accent is perceived as falling, which is the reason monosyllabic words are always perceived as falling. Therefore, truly narrow phonetic transcriptions of lònac, lónca, lȏnci and lȍnācā are or the equivalent.

Although distinctions of pitch occur only in stressed syllables, unstressed vowels maintain a length distinction. Pretonic syllables are always short, but posttonic syllables may be either short or long. These are traditionally counted as two additional accents. In the standard language, the six accents are realized as follows:

Thus, monosyllabics generally have falling tone, and polysyllabics generally have falling or rising tone on the first syllable and rising in all the other syllables but the last one. The tonal opposition rising ~ falling is hence generally possible only in the first accented syllable of polysyllabic words, and the opposition by lengths, long ~ short, is possible in the accented syllable, as well as in the postaccented syllables (but not in a preaccented position).

s, clitics that latch on to a following word, on the other hand, may "steal" a falling tone (but not a rising tone) from the following monosyllabic or disyllabic word. The stolen accent is always short and may end up being either falling or rising on the proclitic.

Letters
The Behalavian Alphabet is a variation of the Cyrillic alphabet used to write the Behalavian language. It is mainly based off of the Lipnitian alphabet, although it does contains elements borrowed from that of Cestrosian. Main difference between the Behalavian alphabet and other Cyrillic alphabets is the usage of dotted I and a variation of the dotted I, Cyrillic J (Both borrowed from Cestrosian iota), rather than И and Й, borrowed from Cestrosian eta, for representation of /i/ and /j/. The usage of dzelo(Ѕ) is also prevalent in Behalavian as a reflex of Proto-Zemlyan *ď.

Punctuation
Most punctuation used in punctuation was heavily borrowed from Cestrosian, although, it was inherited through Old Church Slavonic. Their names and purposes (in general) are also borrowed from their original Cestrosian derivations.