Bit (Khabit, Bid, Psing, Buxing) is an

Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The te ...

language spoken by around 2,000 people in

Phongsaly Province Phongsaly province ( Lao ຜົ້ງສາລີ), also spelled ''Phôngsali'', is a province of Laos in the extreme north of the country. The capital of the province is the city of Phôngsali. Phongsaly is between Yunnan (China), and Điệ ...

, northern Laos and in

Mengla County Mengla County (; Tai Lue: , ''Mueang La''; lo, ເມືອງລ້າ; th, เมืองล้า) is a county under the jurisdiction of the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, in far southern Yunnan province, China. ''Meng'' is a vari ...

, Yunnan, China.

Names

In China, the Buxing people (布兴, 布幸, or 布醒; IPA: ) are also called Kami (佧米人) or Kabi (佧比人, IPA: ). Yan & Zhou (2012:157) list the following names for Khabit. *', ' (autonyms) *' ( Dai exonym) *' (

Khmu The Khmu (; Khmu: ; lo, ຂະມຸ ; th, ขมุ ; vi, Khơ Mú; ; my, ခမူ) are an ethnic group of Southeast Asia. The majority (88%) live in northern Laos where they constitute the largest minority ethnic group, comprising elev ...

exonym) *''Kami'' (卡咪, Chinese exonym) The Khabit name for

is ''ta mɔi''.

Classification

Paul Sidwell Paul James Sidwell is an Australian linguist based in Canberra, Australia who has held research and lecturing positions at the Australian National University. Sidwell, who is also an expert and consultant in forensic linguistics, is most notable ...

(2014) and Svantesson (1990) classify Bit as

Palaungic The nearly thirty Palaungic or Palaung–Wa languages form a branch of the Austroasiatic languages. Phonological developments Most of the Palaungic languages lost the contrastive voicing of the ancestral Austroasiatic consonants, with the disti ...

. It is most closely related to Kháng and