Bumang () is a tonal

Austroasiatic language The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked Provinces of China, province in Southwest China, the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It is spoken by about 200 people in Manzhang (曼仗), Mengla District (勐拉地区), Jinping County, Honghe Prefecture. The existence of Bumang was only recently documented by Chinese linguist Dao Jie in the mid-2000s. It is closely related to Kháng.

Classification

Jerold A. Edmondson Jerold Alan Edmondson (born 1941) (Chinese name: 艾杰瑞 Aì Jiéruì) is an American linguist whose work spans four subdisciplines: historical and comparative linguistics, Asian linguistics, field linguistics, and phonetics. He is a leading spe ...

(2010) considers Bumang and the closely related

Kháng language Kháng (), also known as Mang U’, is an Austroasiatic language of Vietnam. It is closely related to the Bumang language of southern Yunnan, China. Classification Paul Sidwell (2014) classifies Khang as Palaungic, although Jerold Edmondson ( ...

to be

Khmuic languages The Khmuic languages are a branch of the Austroasiatic languages spoken mostly in northern Laos, as well as in neighboring northern Vietnam and southern Yunnan, China. Khmu is the only widely spoken language in the group. Homeland Paul Sidwell ...

based on lexical evidence, while Dao Jie (刀洁, 2007) proposes that Bumang may be a

Palaungic language 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 ...

. Although Bumang and Mang have similar names and are both spoken in Honghe Prefecture of

Province in China, they are not closely related and do not appear to be in the same branch together. Whereas Edmondson considers Bumang to likely be a Khmuic language, Mang is not one, and is more closely related to the Bolyu and Bugan languages of southern China.

Population

The Bumang autonym is '. In China, the Bumang are classified as part of the Dai nationality. Bumang speakers are surrounded by speakers of White Tai ( Tai Don), Black Tai (

Tai Dam The Tai Dam ( Tai Dam: , lo, ໄຕດຳ, th, ไทดำ) are an ethnic minority predominantly from China, northwest Vietnam, Laos, Thailand. They are part of the Tai peoples and ethnically similar to the Thai from Thailand, the Lao from ...

), and Pu'er Dai. Bumang women's clothing is identical to that of the Kháng, Ksingmul, White Tai, and Black Tai. Within Manzhang (曼仗), Mengla District (勐拉地区), Bumang is spoken in Shangmanzhang (上曼仗, with 22 households; known in the Bumang language as ') and Xiamanzhang (下曼仗, with 49 households). Shangmanzhang (上曼仗) is located in Tiantou Village (田头村), Mengla Township (勐拉乡), while Xiamanzhang (下曼仗) is situated on a state-run rubber plantation (国营橡胶农场). The Bumang are descended from Kháng people who had immigrated from Vietnam in the 1800s.

Phonology

Like Kháng, Bumang is a tonal language.

References

Works cited

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External links

Bumang numerals at Lingweb.eva.mpg.deISO 639-3 Registration Authority Request for New Language Code Element in ISO 639-3 (change request number: 2012-048)ISO 639-3 Registration Authority Request for Change to ISO 639-3 Language Code (change request number: 2012-048)
{{Austroasiatic languages Khmuic languages Mangic languages Languages of Yunnan Tonal languages