Thalskhon

Thalskhon, colloquially called Jiral, is the preeminent language spoken by the Jiralhanae Hrutol skein. After the Jiralhanae's rapid accession to the Covenant, Tartarus and his allies used Thalskhon as a lingua franca among the Jiralhanae, pushing against the Covenant's attempts to encourage them to adopt Qerenoka. Thalskhon is consequently spoken widely by many Jiralhanae within the Covenant, though most of those raised outside the cultural sphere of Hrutol learn it only as a second language.

Phonology
As with all alien languages, the sounds listed in the following are approximations or best guesses by the Office of Naval Intelligence to create a standard phonology for Thalskhon in terms understandable to humans. In practice, the actual spoken language is highly varied due to the high number of dialects and non-native speakers, as well as the short time it has enjoyed its hegemonic status among the Jiralhanae.

Phonemes / Romanization

Brackets denote allophones. Note that the romanization scheme differs from that of Qerenoka in several places.


 * /p/ occurs in several dialects as part of a free variation continuum with /b/, but it is not distinguished from /b/ in "standard" Thalskhon.
 * Though human xenolinguists recognize a distinction between t and d, this appears to be a recent phenomenon occurring mostly in loans and foreign names; many speakers have been observed using both interchangeably. Similar ambiguities exist in regards to f/v.
 * The r is trilled, though the exact pronunciation varies by dialect. It is pharyngealized in some contexts.
 * Note that "th" in standard romanization is not the English th, as in the, but a sound akin to the stronger voiceless dental non-sibilant affricate.
 * "x" does not represent "ks" but a more throaty sound akin to that romanized in Qerenoka as "kh". This is also true of the maturity suffix -ox (itself a dialectal variant on a common theme), most famously used in the name Atriox. Though the rest of the name has been anglicized to make it more evocative of the Greco-Roman theme of translated Jiralhanae names, the suffix is rendered reasonably accurately, though most humans still pronounce the "x" incorrectly as "ks" due to common convention as well as the translated name's intentional resemblance to the Latin word atrox.
 * Likewise, "c" represents an exotic approximation of the voiceless epiglottal affricate, which could alternatively be transcribed as "kkh" or "qkh".
 * /ng/ mostly occurs word-medially as a result of lenition, though it is found in other contexts in loanwords from other Jiralhanae languages (as well as Qerenoka).
 * The glottal stop occurs phonetically (often in morpheme boundaries or as a dialectal stand-in for plosives such as t), but it is not recognized as a distinct phoneme and is thus rarely used in romanization.
 * Most English forms of Jiralhanae given names (e.g. Tartarus, Atriox) do not follow this romanization scheme as they are Latinized to a fanciful degree. Place names like Oth Sonin, Doisac, Warial and Teash are transcribed reasonably accurately, though as with all Covenant languages, conventions vary.

There is no semantic distinction between short and long vowels (though both occur phonetically).

Phonotactics
The standard syllable structure is (C)CVC.


 * Most consonants can act as a syllable onset or be in the word-initial position, though /ng/ is mostly found word-medially.
 * The following consonants may act as codas: c, k, g, t, l,
 * The following consonants occur word-finally:

Unlike in Qerenoka, consonants (such as c, s, l, or x) are very common in syllable codas as well as word-finally.