The K’aavjo languages are a language family originating in the K’aavjo mountains. They form a dialect continuum, but different branches are not mutually intelligible. Despite this they are often referred to as dialects, especially by Shewez speakers and in official publications. These languages are all descended from Proto-K’aavjo, a language spoken around two thousand years ago. In total, the K’aavjo languages have a speaker base of around 25 million. Shewez K’aavjo is the most widely spoken language of the family, with a speaker base of 17 million.
The K’aavjo languages tend to be isolating, ergative-absolutive, have a free word order that defaults to SVO, have a medium-to-large consonant inventory, and have a small vowel inventory (not counting diphthongs and long vowels). They tend to have a fairly simple syllable structure – (C2)V(C) is most common, with only liquids being permissible after other consonants – but Telqash allows more consonant clusters. They also use a base-12 number system (but may use a base-10 system alongside it for international compatibility).
The eastern dialects, with a five-to-six-vowel system, have the most vowels, and the Telqash language has the least, with three. There is an obscure central/eastern dialect that some argue has seven. Proto-K’aavjo, however, had eleven vowels. The fact that the western languages share the small vowel inventory of its sister languages is a coincidence; they diverged before the vowels of Proto-K’aavjo began to decline in number, and developed this trait independently.
Eastern dialects/languages, sometimes referred to as the Shewez dialects, tend to make heavy use of ejectives. Eastern dialects also have a masculine-feminine noun gender system, which has been lost for verbs and inanimate objects in the central and southern dialects, and lost entirely in Telqash.
Most K’aavjo languages have phonemic vowel length, but only (most of) the western languages have phonemic consonant length. K’aavjo languages generally do not mark animacy, but some speakers of southern dialects have adopted an animate/inanimate system due to contact with Rlvaky.