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Hlai languages

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Hlai
Li
  Ha dialect
  Qi dialect
  Run dialect
  Meifu dialect
  Jiamao language
Native toChina
RegionHainan
EthnicityHlai
Native speakers
(667,000 cited 1999)[1]
Kra–Dai
Early form
Proto-Hlai (reconstructed)
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
lic – Hlai
cuq – Cun
Glottolognucl1241
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The Hlai languages (Chinese: é»ŽèŻ­; pinyin: LĂ­yǔ) 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: é»ŽèŻ; pinyin: LĂ­huĂ ). They include Cun, whose speakers are ethnically distinct.[2] 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

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Norquest (2007) classifies the Hlai languages as follows.[3] There are some 750,000 Hlai speakers.

  • Proto-Hlai
    • Bouhin (Hēitǔ é»‘ćœŸ) – 73,000
    • Greater Hlai
      • Ha Em 擈炎 (Zhƍngshā äž­æș) – 193,000
      • Central Hlai
        • East Central Hlai – 344,000
          • Lauhut (BǎodĂŹng 保漚) – 166,000, the basis of the literary language
          • Qi 杞 (also known as Gei) – 178,000
            • Tongzha (TƍngshĂ­ 通什) – 125,000
            • Zandui (QiĂ nduĂŹ 树ćŻč) – 29,000
            • BǎotĂ­ng 保äș­ – 24,000
        • North Central Hlai – 136,500
          • Northwest Central Hlai – 62,500
            • Cun æ‘èŻ­ (Ngan Fon, GēlĂłng 以隆) – 60,000
            • NĂ dĂČu é‚Łæ–— (Dƍngfāng 侜æ–č) – 2,500
          • Northeast Central Hlai – 74,000
            • MěifĂș çŸŽć­š (Moifau) – 30,000
              • Chāngjiāng 昌江
              • Moyfaw (XÄ«fāng è„żæ–č)
            • RĂčn 涊 (Zwn; also known as BěndĂŹ æœŹćœ°) – 44,000
              • BĂĄishā 癜æș – 36,000
              • YuĂĄnmĂ©n 慃闹 – 8,000

Nadou is spoken by approximately 4,000 people in the two villages of NĂ dĂČu é‚Łæ–—æ‘ (in XÄ«nlĂłng Town 新韙镇) and YuĂš 月村 (in Bāsuǒ Town ć…«æ‰€é•‡), in Dongfang, Hainan. Speakers refer to themselves as laiÂčÂč and are officially classified by the Chinese government as ethnic Han Chinese.[4]

JiāmĂ o ćŠ èŒ‚ (52,000 speakers) is a divergent Kra-Dai language with a Hlai superstratum and a non-Hlai substratum.[3]

Reconstruction

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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

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The following displays the phonological features of the modern Hlai dialects:[5][6][7]

Consonants

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Bilabial Labio-
dental		 Alveolar Alveolo-
palatal		 Velar Glottal
plain lab. plain lab. pal.
Plosive voiceless p t ȶ k kʷ ʔ
aspirated pÊ° tÊ° kÊ° kÊ°Ê·
voiced ÉĄ ÉĄÊ·
implosive ɓ ɗ
Affricate voiceless tÍĄs
aspirated tÍĄsÊ°
Fricative voiceless f s x h hÊ· hÊČ
voiced v z ÉŁ
lateral ÉŹ
Nasal m (ɱ) n È” Ƌ Ć‹Ê·
Trill r
Approximant l ˀj ˀw
  • [ÉŹ], [f] mainly occur word-initially among various dialects. [ÉŹ] may also be realized as [tÉŹ].
  • [x], [ÉŁ] mainly occur among the Xifang dialects.
  • [ÉŁ] can also occur as an allophone of /ÉĄ/.
  • /tÍĄs/, /tÍĄsÊ°/, /z/ are pronounced as alveolo-palatal sounds [t͡ɕ], [tÍĄÉ•Ê°], [ɕ], among other various dialects.
  • /r/ can have allophones as [ÉŸ, dÉŸ].
  • For a brief period of time Yuanmen distinguished /m/ and /ɱ/ after */Ƌw/ became /ɱ/ which soon merged with /m/.[8]

Vowels

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Front Central Back
High i ÉŻ u
Mid e ə o
ɛ ɔ
Low a
  • Among other Hlai dialects, /a, i, e, o/ can have allophones of [ɐ, ÉȘ, ɛ, ɔ].
  • Vowel sounds /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are common among the Baisha and Jiamao dialects.
  • /ə/ occurs among some dialects.

History

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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]

According to Ostapirat (2026), Hlai originated much further to the southwest from north-central Vietnam. The ancestors of present-day Hlai speakers migrated directly to southern Hainan but not northern Hainan, since they followed a migration route that skipped the Leizhou Peninsula.[10]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ↑ Hlai at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
    Cun at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ↑ Ethnologue mistakenly lists Cun among the Kra languages.
  3. 1 2 Norquest, Peter K. (2007). A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Hlai (Ph.D. thesis). University of Arizona. hdl:10150/194203.
  4. ↑ Fu, Changzhong çŹŠæ˜Œćż  (2020). Nadouyu yanjiu é‚Łæ–—èŻ­ç ”ç©¶. Beijing: Minzu chubanshe 民族ć‡ș版瀟. OCLC 1294545717.
  5. ↑ Ostapirat, Weera (2008). "The Hlai Language". In Diller, Anthony V. N.; Edmondson, Jerold A.; Luo, Yongxian (eds.). The Tai-Kadai Languages. London & New York: Routledge. pp. 623–652.
  6. ↑ Yuan, Zhongshu è‹‘äž­æ ‘, ed. (1994). LĂ­yǔ yǔfǎ gāngyĂ o é»ŽèŻ­èŻ­æł•çșČ芁 [An Outline of Li Grammar] (in Chinese). Beijing: Zhongyang minzu daxue chubanshe. pp. 1–10.
  7. ↑ Ouyang, Jueya æŹ§é˜łè§‰äșš (1980). LĂ­yǔ jiǎnzhĂŹ é»ŽèŻ­çź€ćż— [Description of the Li language] (in Chinese). Beijing: Minzu chubanshe.
  8. ↑ Norquest (2007), p. 106
  9. 1 2 Liang, Min æąæ•; Zhang, Junru ćŒ ć‡ćŠ‚ (1996). DĂČng tĂĄi yǔzĂș gĂ ilĂčn äŸ—ć°èŻ­æ—æŠ‚èźș [An Introduction to the Kam–Tai Languages] (in Chinese). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. ISBN 9787500416814.
  10. ↑ Ostapirat, Weera (2026). "Kra-Dai Migration and Austro-Tai Numerals". In Kikusawa, Ritsuko; Okamoto, Susumu; Suzuki, Hiroyuki (eds.). Establishing Spatiotemporal Linguistics: Toward an Interdisciplinary Approach to the History of Language and of Human Movement. Brill. p. 41–54. doi:10.1163/9789004762077-004. ISBN 978-90-04-76207-7.

References

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  • Ostapirat, Weera (2005). "The Cun Language, by Ouyang Jueya. Shanghai Far East Publishers. 1998" (PDF). Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 28 (1): 99–105.
  • Ouyang, Jueya æŹ§é˜łè§‰äșš; Zheng, Yiqing 郑莻青 (1983). LĂ­yǔ diĂ ochĂĄ yĂĄnjiĆ« é»ŽèŻ­è°ƒæŸ„ç ”ç©¶ [Li Language Investigation and Research] (in Chinese). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe.

Further reading

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