Social:Hlai languages
| Hlai | |
|---|---|
| Li | |
| Native to | China |
| Region | Hainan |
| Ethnicity | Hlai |
Native speakers | (667,000 cited 1999)[1] |
Kra–Dai
| |
Early form | Proto-Hlai (reconstructed)
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either:lic – Hlaicuq – Cun |
| Glottolog | nucl1241[2] |
The Hlai languages (Chinese: 黎语; pinyin: Lí yǔ) are a primary branch of the Kra–Dai language family spoken in the mountains of central and south-central Hainan in China by the Hlai people, not to be confused with the colloquial name for the Leizhou branch of Min Chinese (Chinese: 黎话; pinyin: Lí huà). They include Cun, whose speakers are ethnically distinct.[3] A quarter of Hlai speakers are monolingual. None of the Hlai languages had a writing system until the 1950s, when the Latin script was adopted for Ha.
Classification
Norquest (2007) classifies the Hlai languages as follows.[4] Individual languages are highlighted in bold. There are some 750,000 Hlai speakers.
- Proto-Hlai
- Bouhin (Heitu 黑土) – 73,000
- Greater Hlai
- Ha Em 哈炎 (Zhongsha 中沙) – 193,000
- Central Hlai
- East Central Hlai – 344,000
- Lauhut (Baoding 保定) – 166,000, the basis of the literary language
- Qi 杞 also known as Gei – 178,000
- Tongzha (Tongshi 通什) – 125,000
- Zandui (Qiandui 堑对) – 29,000
- Baoting 保亭 – 24,000
- North Central Hlai – 136,500
- Northwest Central Hlai – 62,500
- Cun (Ngan Fon, Gelong 仡隆) – 60,000
- Nadou (Dongfang 东方) – 2,500
- Northeast Central Hlai – 74,000
- Meifu 美孚 (Moifau) – 30,000
- Changjiang 昌江
- Moyfaw (Xifang 西方)
- Run (Zwn) also known as Bendi – 44,000
- Baisha 白沙 – 36,000
- Yuanmen 元门 – 8,000
- Meifu 美孚 (Moifau) – 30,000
- Northwest Central Hlai – 62,500
- East Central Hlai – 344,000
The Fuma 府玛 dialect is spoken in one village north of Changcheng 昌城, Hainan. It had about 800 speakers in 1994.[5]
Jiamao 加茂 (52,000) is an aberrant Kra-Dai language with a Hlai superstratum and a non-Hlai substratum.
Reconstruction
The Proto-Hlai language is the reconstructed ancestor of the Hlai languages. Proto-Hlai reconstructions include those of Matisoff (1988), Thurgood (1991), Ostapirat (2004), and Norquest (2007).
Phonology
The following displays the phonological features of the modern Hlai dialects:[6][7][8]
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Alveolar | Alveolo- palatal |
Velar | Glottal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | plain | lab. | pal. | ||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | ȶ | k | kʷ | ʔ | |||
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | kʰʷ | ||||||
| voiced | ɡ | ɡʷ | ||||||||
| implosive | ɓ | ɗ | ||||||||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | ||||||||
| aspirated | t͡sʰ | |||||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | (s) | x | h | hʷ | hʲ | |||
| voiced | v | z | ɣ | |||||||
| lateral | ɬ | |||||||||
| Nasal | m | ɱ | n | ȵ | ŋ | ŋʷ | ||||
| Trill | r | |||||||||
| Approximant | l | ˀj | ˀw | |||||||
- [ɣ] can occur as an allophone of /ɡ/.
- [ɬ], [f] mainly occur word-initially among various dialects. [ɬ] may also be realized as [tɬ].
- [x], [ɣ] mainly occur among the Xifang dialects.
- /t͡s/, /t͡sʰ/, /z/ are pronounced as alveolo-palatal sounds [t͡ɕ], [t͡ɕʰ], [ɕ], among other various dialects.
- /r/ can have allophones as [ɾ, dɾ].
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | ɯ | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | o | |
| ɛ | ɔ | |||
| Low | a | |||
- Among other Hlai dialects, /a, i, e, o/ can have allophones of [ɐ, ɪ, ɛ, ɔ].
- Vowel sounds /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are common among the Baisha and Jiamao dialects.
- /ə/ occurs among some dialects.
History
Liang & Zhang (1996:18-21)[9] conclude that the original homeland of the Hlai languages was the Leizhou Peninsula, and estimate that the Hlai had migrated across the Hainan Strait to Hainan island about 4,000 years before present.[9]
See also
- List of Proto-Hlai reconstructions (Wiktionary)
- Has Hlai grammar
- Hlai people
- Proto-Hlai language
Notes
- ↑ Hlai at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Cun at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) - ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds (2017). "Nuclear Hlaic". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/nucl1241.
- ↑ Ethnologue mistakenly lists Cun among the Kra languages.
- ↑ Norquest, Peter K. (2007). A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Hlai (Ph.D. thesis). University of Arizona. hdl:10150/194203.
- ↑ Funa, http://asiaharvest.org/wp-content/themes/asia/docs/people-groups/China/chinaPeoples/F/Fuma.pdf
- ↑ Ostapirat, Weera (2008). "The Hlai Language". in Diller, Anthony V. N.. The Tai-Kadai Languages. London & New York: Routledge. pp. 623–652.
- ↑ Yuan, Zhongshu 苑中树, ed (1994) (in zh). Líyǔ yǔfǎ gāngyào. Beijing: Zhongyang minzu daxue chubanshe. pp. 1–10.
- ↑ Ouyang, Jueya 欧阳觉亚 (1980) (in zh). Líyǔ jiǎnzhì. Beijing: Minzu chubanshe.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Liang, Min 梁敏; Zhang, Junru 张均如 (1996) (in zh). Dòng tái yǔzú gàilùn. Beijing: Zhongguo she hui ke xue chubanshe. ISBN 9787500416814.
References
- Ostapirat, Weera (2005). "The Cun Language, by Ouyang Jueya. Shanghai Far East Publishers. 1998". Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 28 (1): 99–105. http://sealang.net/sala/archives/pdf8/weera2005review.pdf.
- Ouyang, Jueya 欧阳觉亚; Zheng, Yiqing 郑贻青 (1983) (in zh). Líyǔ diàochá yánjiū. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe.
Further reading
- Miyake, Marc. 2013. The other Kra-Dai numerals (Parts 1, 2).
- Miyake, Marc. 2011. Is Jiamao Hlai?
- Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hlai -ɯ.
- Miyake, Marc. 2008. Implosives on Hainan. (Parts 1, 2).
- Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hlai initial verification.
- Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hlai initial glides.
- Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hlai palatal codas.
- 中国科学院少数民族语言调查第一工作队海南分队编. 1957. Guanyu huafen Liyu fangyan he chuangzuo Liwen de yijian 关于划分黎语方言和创作黎文的意见. 黎族语言文字问题科学讨论会.
External links
- Bible recordings in various Hlai languages
- ABVD: Proto-Hlai word list
- Hlai-language Swadesh vocabulary list of basic words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
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