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Mulam Language
The Mulam language () is a Kam–Sui language spoken mainly in Luocheng County, Hechi, Northern Guangxi by the Mulao people. The greatest concentrations are in Dongmen and Siba communes. Their autonym is ''mu6 lam1''.See Proto-Tai_language#Tones for an explanation of the tone codes. The Mulam also call themselves ''kjam1'', which is probably cognate with ''lam1'' and the Dong people's autonym "Kam" (Wang & Zheng 1980). The Mulam language, like Dong, does not have voiced stop, but does have a phonemic distinction between unvoiced and voiced nasals and laterals. It has a system of eleven distinct vowels. It is a tonal language with ten tones and 65% of its vocabulary is shared with the Zhuang and Dong languages. The language of Mulam leads to a comparison between two languages as Graham Thurgood states, "For 'headlouse', the KS forms are highly irregular: Kam, Mulam…" (Oceanic Linguistics, Vol. 33, No 2). This relates to the way in which one language can be interpreted thr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kra Languages
The Kra languages (also known as the Geyang 仡央 or Kadai languages) are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family spoken in southern China (Guizhou, Guangxi, Yunnan) and in northern Vietnam ( Hà Giang Province). Names The name ''Kra'' comes from the word C "human" as reconstructed by Ostapirat (2000), which appears in various Kra languages as ''kra'', ''ka'', ''fa'' or ''ha''. Benedict (1942) used the term ''Kadai'' for the Kra and Hlai languages grouped together and the term ''Kra-Dai'' is proposed by Ostapirat (2000). The Kra branch was first identified as a unified group of languages by Liang (1990),Liang Min 梁敏. 1990Geyang yuqun de xishu wenti 仡央语群的系属问题/ On the affiliation of the Ge-Yang group of languages." In ''Minzu Yuwen'' 民族语文 1990(6): 1-8. who called it the ''Geyang'' 仡央 languages. ''Geyang'' 仡央 is a portmanteau of the first syllable of ''Ge''- in Gelao and the last syllable of -''yang'' in Buyang. The name ''Kra'' was propos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kam People
The Kam people, officially known in China as Dong people (; endonym: , ), a Kam–Sui people of Southern China, are one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. They are famed for their native-bred ''Kam Sweet Rice'' (), carpentry skills and unique architecture, in particular a form of covered bridge known as the "wind and rain bridge" (). The Kam people live mostly in Eastern Guizhou, Western Hunan and Northern Guangxi in China. Small pockets of Kam speakers are found in Tuyên Quang Province in Vietnam. The Kam people call themselves Kam, Geml, Jeml or Gaelm. History The Kam are thought to be the modern-day descendants of the ancient Liáo (僚) peoples who occupied much of southern China.D. Norman Geary, Ruth B. Geary, Ou Chaoquan, Long Yaohong, Jiang Daren, Wang Jiying (2003). ''The Kam People of China: Turning Nineteen''. (London / New York, RoutledgeCurzon 2003). . Kam legends generally maintain that the ancestors of the Kam migrate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luocheng Mulao Autonomous County
Luocheng Mulao Autonomous County ( zhuang: ,) is a county of northern Guangxi, China. It is under the administration of Hechi City. Administrative divisions There are 7 towns and 4 townships in the county: * Towns (): ** Dongmen () ** Long'an () ** Huangjin () ** Xiaochang'an () **Siba () ** Tianhe () **Huaiqun () *Townships (): **Baotan Township () ** Qiaoshan Township () **Naweng Township () **Jian'ai Township () Languages The Mulao language (or Mulam) is spoken by the Mulao people of Luocheng County. At least seven varieties of Chinese are spoken in Luocheng County (Edmondson 1992:137). *Putonghua is the national language of China. *Gui-Liu Hua is a local Pinghua variety spoken in Guilin and Liuzhou. It was spoken by government officials formerly sent to administer the region, and also used to be spoken in the provincial court. *Tuguai Hua is the local Southwestern Mandarin vernacular spoken in Luocheng, Rongshui, and other nearby counties. *Magai is a Cantonese variety i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qing Dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaking ethnic group who unified other Jurchen tribes to form a new "Manchu" ethnic identity. The dynasty was officially proclaimed in 1636 in Manchuria (modern-day Northeast China and Outer Manchuria). It seized control of Beijing in 1644, then later expanded its rule over the whole of China proper and Taiwan, and finally expanded into Inner Asia. The dynasty lasted until 1912 when it was overthrown in the Xinhai Revolution. In orthodox Chinese historiography, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The multiethnic Qing dynasty lasted for almost three centuries and assembled the territorial base for modern China. It was the largest imperial dynasty in the history of China and in 1790 the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yuan Dynasty
The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fifth khagan-emperor of the Mongol Empire from the Borjigin clan, and lasted from 1271 to 1368. In orthodox Chinese historiography, the Yuan dynasty followed the Song dynasty and preceded the Ming dynasty. Although Genghis Khan had been enthroned with the Han-style title of Emperor in 1206 and the Mongol Empire had ruled territories including modern-day northern China for decades, it was not until 1271 that Kublai Khan officially proclaimed the dynasty in the traditional Han style, and the conquest was not complete until 1279 when the Southern Song dynasty was defeated in the Battle of Yamen. His realm was, by this point, isolated from the other Mongol-led khanates and controlled most of modern-day China and its surrounding areas, including ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graham Thurgood
Graham Thurgood () is a retired professor of linguistics at California State University, Chico. Thurgood graduated with a Ph.D. in linguistics from University of California, Berkeley, where he studied under James Matisoff. Thurgood's areas of specialization include tonogenesis, historical linguistics, language contact, and second language acquisition. Thurgood has reconstructed Chamic ( Austronesian), the Hlai languages ( Kra-Dai and Kam-Sui), and parts of Tibeto-Burman (Sino-Tibetan). Thurgood's tone work includes the reconstruction of tone in Chamic, internal reconstruction of tone in Jiamao Jiamao (, ''Jiamao''; also ''Tái'' or ''Sāi'') is a possible language isolate spoken in southern Hainan, China. Jiamao speakers' autonym is ''1''.See Proto-Tai_language#Tones for an explanation of the tone codes. Classification Jiamao was ..., and a substantial article on tonogenesis in general. Publications * * Graham Thurgood. (1999). From Ancient Cham to Modern Dialects: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zhuang Languages
The Zhuang languages (; autonym: , pre-1982: , Sawndip: 話僮, from ''vah'', 'language' and ''Cuengh'', 'Zhuang'; ) are any of more than a dozen Tai languages spoken by the Zhuang people of Southern China in the province of Guangxi and adjacent parts of Yunnan and Guangdong. The Zhuang languages do not form a monophyletic linguistic unit, as northern and southern Zhuang languages are more closely related to other Tai languages than to each other. Northern Zhuang languages form a dialect continuum with Northern Tai varieties across the provincial border in Guizhou, which are designated as Bouyei, whereas Southern Zhuang languages form another dialect continuum with Central Tai varieties such as Nung, Tay and Caolan in Vietnam. Standard Zhuang is based on the Northern Zhuang dialect of Wuming. The Tai languages are believed to have been originally spoken in what is now southern China, with speakers of the Southwestern Tai languages (which include Thai, Lao and Shan) having ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast and other such features in what is called intonation (linguistics), intonation, but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. Languages that have this feature are called tonal languages; the distinctive tone patterns of such a language are sometimes called tonemes, by analogy with ''phoneme''. Tonal languages are common in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Americas and the Pacific. Tonal languages are different from Pitch-accent language, pitch-accent languages in that tonal languages can have each syllable with an independent tone whilst pitch-accent languages may have one syllable in a word or morpheme that is more prominent than the others. Mechanics Mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length). They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress. The word ''vowel'' comes from the Latin word , meaning "vocal" (i.e. relating to the voice). In English, the word ''vowel'' is commonly used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the written symbols that represent them (a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y). Definition There are two complementary definitions of vowel, one phonetic and the other phonological. *In the phonetic definition, a vowel is a sound, such as the English "ah" or "oh" , produced with an open vocal tract; it is median (the air escapes along the middle of the tongue), oral (at least some of the airflow must escape through the mouth), frictionless and continuant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kam Language
The Kam language, also known as Gam (autonym: ''lix Gaeml''), or in Chinese, Dong or Tung-Chia, is a Kam–Sui language spoken by the Dong people. ''Ethnologue'' distinguishes three Kam varieties as separate but closely related languages. Dialects The Kam language can be divided into two major subdivisions, Southern Kam and Northern Kam (Yang & Edmondson 2008).Yang Tongyin and Jerold A. Edmondson (2008). "Kam." In Diller, Anthony, Jerold A. Edmondson, and Yongxian Luo ed. ''The Tai–Kadai Languages''. Routledge Language Family Series. Psychology Press, 2008. Northern Kam displays more Chinese influence and lacks vowel length contrast, while Southern Kam is more conservative. Language varieties closely related to or part of Kam include Cao Miao and Naxi Yao. A northern Pinghua variety called Tongdao Pinghua, spoken in Tongdao County, Hunan, has also been significantly influenced by Kam. ;Southern Kam *First lectal area: Róngjiāng Zhānglǔ (), Lípíng Hóngzhōu (), Jǐnp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Tai Language
Proto-Tai is the reconstructed proto-language (common ancestor) of all the Tai languages, including modern Lao, Shan, Tai Lü, Tai Dam, Ahom, Northern Thai, Standard Thai, Bouyei, and Zhuang. The Proto-Tai language is not directly attested by any surviving texts, but has been reconstructed using the comparative method. It was reconstructed in 1977 by Li Fang-KueiLi, Fang-Kuei. (1977). ''A handbook of comparative Tai''. Manoa: University Press of Hawaii. and by Pittayawat Pittayaporn in 2009.Pittayaporn, Pittayawat. (2009a)''The Phonology of Proto-Tai (Doctoral dissertation)''.Department of Linguistics, Cornell University. Phonology Consonants The following table shows the consonants of Proto-Tai according to Li Fang-Kuei's ''A Handbook of Comparative Tai'' (1977), considered the standard reference in the field. Li does not indicate the exact quality of the consonants denoted here as and which are indicated in his work as , čh, žand described merely as palatal af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guizhou
Guizhou (; formerly Kweichow) is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the center of the province. Guizhou borders the autonomous region of Guangxi to the south, Yunnan to the west, Sichuan to the northwest, the municipality of Chongqing to the north, and Hunan to the east. The population of Guizhou stands at 38.5 million, ranking 18th among the provinces in China. The Dian Kingdom, which inhabited the present-day area of Guizhou, was annexed by the Han dynasty in 106 BC. Guizhou was formally made a province in 1413 during the Ming dynasty. After the overthrow of the Qing in 1911 and following the Chinese Civil War, the Chinese Communist Party took refuge in Guizhou during the Long March between 1934 and 1935. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong promoted the relocation of heavy industry into inland provinces such as Guizhou, to better protect them fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
