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Proto-Tai
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] |
Tai Languages
The Tai or Zhuang–Tai languages ( th, ภาษาไท or , transliteration: or ) are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family. The Tai languages include the most widely spoken of the Tai–Kadai languages, including Standard Thai or Siamese, the national language of Thailand; Lao or Laotian, the national language of Laos; Myanmar's Shan language; and Zhuang, a major language in the Southwestern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, spoken by the Zhuang (壯) people, the largest minority ethnic group in China, with a population of 15.55 million, living mainly in Guangxi, the rest scattered across Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou and Hunan provinces. Name Cognates with the name ''Tai'' (''Thai, Dai'', etc.) are used by speakers of many Tai languages. The term ''Tai'' is now well-established as the generic name in English. In his book '' The Tai-Kadai Languages'' Anthony Diller claims that Lao scholars he has met are not pleased with Lao being regarded as a Tai language. k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern Thai Language
Kam Mueang ( nod, , กำเมือง) or Northern Thai language ( th, ภาษาไทยถิ่นเหนือ) is the language of the Northern Thai people of Lanna, Thailand. It is a Southwestern Tai language that is closely related to Lao. Kam Mueang has approximately six million speakers, most of whom live in the native Northern Thailand, with a smaller community of Lanna speakers in northwestern Laos. Speakers of this language generally consider the name "Tai Yuan" to be pejorative. They refer to themselves as ' (, คน เมือง, – literally "people of Mueang" meaning "city dwellers"), Lanna, or Northern Thai. The language is also sometimes referred to as ' (พายัพ, ), "Northwestern (speech)". The term Yuan is still sometimes used for Northern Thai's distinctive Tai Tham alphabet, which is closely related to the old Tai Lue alphabet and the Lao religious alphabets. The use of the ', as the traditional alphabet is known, is now largely lim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ahom Language
The Ahom language or Tai-Ahom language is a dead language, that was spoken by the Ahom people, that is undergoing a revival. Ahom is an important language in Tai studies. It was relatively free of both Mon-Khmer and Indo-Aryan influences and has a written tradition dating back to the 13th century. The Ahom people established the Ahom kingdom and ruled parts of the Brahmaputra river valley in the present day Indian state of Assam between the 13th and the 18th centuries. The language was the court language of the kingdom, until it began to be replaced by the Assamese language in the 17th century. Since the early 18th century, there have been no native speakers of the language, though extensive manuscripts in the language still exist today. The tonal system of the language is entirely lost. The language was only partially known by a small group of traditional priests of the Ahom religion, and it was being used only for ceremonial or ritualistic purposes. Classification Tai-Ahom is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bouyei Language
The Bouyei language (autonym: Haausqyaix, also spelled ''Buyi'', ''Buyei'' or ''Puyi''; ; vi, tiếng Bố Y or ) is a language spoken by the Bouyei ethnic group of Southern Guizhou Province, China. Classified as a member of the Northern Tai group in the Tai language branch of the Tai–Kadai language family, the language has over 2.5 million native speakers and is also used by the Giay people ( vi, Giáy) in some parts of Vietnam. There are native speakers living in France or the United States as well, which emigrated from China or Vietnam. About 98% of the native speakers are in China. Bouyei's characteristics are similar to the other members of its language branch. It is generally monosyllabic and word order and particles are the main forms of grammar. Bouyei's syllable initials match up closely to the other Northern Tai languages, with relatively fast simplification and merging. Bouyei sentences can be shown to contain many different levels of phrasing. The contemporary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southwestern Tai Languages
The Southwestern Tai, Southwestern Thai or Thai languages are a branch of the Tai languages of Southeast Asia. Its dialects include Siamese (Central Thai), Lanna, Lao, Shan and others. Classification The internal classification of the Southwestern Tai dialects is still not well agreed on. Chamberlain (1975) Chamberlain (1975) divides Southwestern Tai into 4 branches.Chamberlain, James R. 1975.A new look at the history and classification of the Tai dialects" In J. G. Harris and J. R. Chamberlain, eds, Studies in Tai Linguistics in Honor of William J. Gedney, pp. 49-60. Bangkok: Central Institute of English Language, Office of State Universities. Chamberlain based his classification on the following phonological patterns. (''Note: For an explanation of the notation system for Tai tones, see Proto-Tai language#Tones''.) #/p/ vs. /ph/ #tone *A column split/merger pattern #tone *BCD columns split/merger patterns #B-DL tonal coalescence ;Proto-Southwestern Tai *Branch with distin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tai Dam Language
Tai Dam (), also known as Black Tai ( th, ภาษาไทดำ; ; vi, tiếng Thái Đen; "Black Tai language"; ), is a Tai language spoken by the Tai Dam in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and China (mostly in Jinping Miao, Yao, and Dai Autonomous County). The Tai Dam language is similar to Thai and Lao (Isan), but it is not close enough to be readily understood by most Thai and Lao (Isan) speakers. In particular, the Khmer, Pali and Sanskrit additions to Thai and Lao (Isan) are largely missing from Tai Dam. Geographical distribution Tai Dam is spoken in Vietnam, China, Laos, and Thailand. In central Thailand, it is known as Thai Song. Tai Dam speakers in China are classified as part of the Dai nationality along with almost all the other Tai peoples. But in Vietnam they are given their own nationality (with the White Tai) where they are classified (confusingly for English speakers) as the Thái nationality (meaning Tai people). In China, Tai Dam () people are located in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lao Language
Lao, sometimes referred to as Laotian (, 'Lao' or , 'Lao language'), is a Kra–Dai language of the Lao people. It is spoken in Laos, where it is the official language for around 7 million people, as well as in northeast Thailand, where it is used by around 23 million people, usually referred to as Isan. Lao serves as a lingua franca among the citizens of Laos, who also speak approximately 90 other languages, many of which are unrelated to Lao. It is a tonal and analytic language, similar to other Kra-Dai languages as well as to Chinese and Vietnamese. Spoken Lao is mutually intelligible with Thai and Isan, fellow Southwestern Tai languages, to such a degree that their speakers are able to effectively communicate with one another speaking their respective languages. These languages are written with slightly different scripts but are linguistically similar and effectively form a dialect continuum. Although there is no official standard, the Vientiane dialect became the de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Standard Zhuang
Standard Zhuang (autonym: , , (pre-1982: ; Sawndip: ); ) is the official standardized form of the Zhuang languages, which are a branch of the Northern Tai languages. Its pronunciation is based on that of the Yongbei Zhuang dialect of Shuangqiao Town in Wuming District, Guangxi with some influence from Fuliang, also in Wuming District, while its vocabulary is based mainly on northern dialects. The official standard covers both spoken and written Zhuang. It is the national standard of the Zhuang languages, though in Yunnan a local standard is used. Phonology The following displays the phonological features of the Wuming and northern dialects of Zhuang: Consonants Among other northern dialects of Zhuang, may be heard as a or sound. Absent consonant produces . An unusual and rare feature that Zhuang possesses is the lack of /s/, which is a common fricative among most languages that have them (one other notable exception is in the Australian languages), and yet Zhuang ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Li Fang-Kuei
Li Fang-Kuei (Chinese: 李方桂, Cantonese: Lei5 Fong1 Gwai3 ej˩˨ fɔŋ˦ gʷaj˧, Mandarin: Lǐ Fāngguì i˨ faŋ˦ gʷej˥˩ 20 August 190221 August 1987) was a Chinese linguist known for his studies of the varieties of Chinese, his reconstructions of Old Chinese and Proto-Tai, and his documentation of Dene languages in North America. Biography Li Fang-Kuei was born on 20 August 1902 in Canton (Guangzhou) during the final years of the Qing dynasty to a minor scholarly family from Xiyang, a small town in Shanxi roughly south of Yangquan. Li's father Li Guangyu () received his ''jinshi'' degree in 1880 and served in minor official posts in the late 19th to early 20th century. Li was one of the first Chinese people to study linguistics outside China. Originally a student of medicine, he switched to linguistics when he went to the United States in 1924. He gained a BA in linguistics at the University of Michigan in 1926 after only two years of study. He then did graduate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liquid Consonant
In phonetics, liquids are a class of consonants consisting of voiced lateral approximants like together with rhotics like . Etymology The grammarian Dionysius Thrax used the Ancient Greek word (, ) to describe the sonorant consonants () of classical Greek. Most commentators assume that this referred to their "slippery" effect on meter in classical Greek verse when they occur as the second member of a consonant cluster. This word was calqued into Latin as , whence it has been retained in the Western European phonetic tradition. Phonological properties Liquids as a class often behave in a similar way in the phonotactics of a language: for example, they often have the greatest freedom in occurring in consonant clusters. Metathesis Cross-linguistically, liquids are the consonants most prone to metathesis. Spanish In Spanish, /r/ is liable for metathesis. More specifically, /r/ and /l/ frequently switch places: * Lat. ''crocodīlus'' > Span. ''cocodrilo'' “crocodile” * L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nasal Consonant
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majority of consonants are oral consonants. Examples of nasals in English are , and , in words such as ''nose'', ''bring'' and ''mouth''. Nasal occlusives are nearly universal in human languages. There are also other kinds of nasal consonants in some languages. Definition Nearly all nasal consonants are nasal occlusives, in which air escapes through the nose but not through the mouth, as it is blocked (occluded) by the lips or tongue. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound. Rarely, non-occlusive consonants may be nasalized. Most nasals are voiced, and in fact, the nasal sounds and are among the most common sounds cross-linguistically. Voiceless nasals occur in a few languages such as Burmese, Welsh, Icelandic and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glottal Consonant
Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the glottal fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have, while some do not consider them to be consonants at all. However, glottal consonants behave as typical consonants in many languages. For example, in Literary Arabic, most words are formed from a root ''C-C-C'' consisting of three consonants, which are inserted into templates such as or . The glottal consonants and can occupy any of the three root consonant slots, just like "normal" consonants such as or . The glottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet are as follows: Characteristics In many languages, the "fricatives" are not true fricatives. This is a historical usage of the word. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis ( phonation) without a specific place of articulation, and may behave as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
