Mlabri is a language spoken by the

Mlabri people The Mlabri ( Thai: มลาบรี) or Mrabri, also called the Phi Tong Luang, are an ethnic group of Thailand and Laos, and have been called "the most interesting and least understood people in Southeast Asia". Only about 400 or fewer Mlabris r ...

in the border area between

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

and

Laos Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR), is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southeast, and Thailand to the west and ...

. It is usually classified as a Khmuic language, a subgroup of the

Austroasiatic languages The Austroasiatic languages ( ) are a large language family spoken throughout Mainland Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia. These languages are natively spoken by the majority of the population in Vietnam and Cambodia, and by minority popu ...

Linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

Jørgen Rischel has studied the language and described its peculiarities in several works. He divides the language into three varieties: one spoken by a small group in Laos and previously called ''Yumbri'', and two others spoken by larger groups in Thailand. They differ in intonation and in

lexicon A lexicon (plural: lexicons, rarely lexica) is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Greek word () ...

. Although it is possible to count up to ten in Mlabri, only the numerals one and two may be used to modify a noun, and the word for 'two' has uses closer to 'pair' or 'couple' in English than a numeral.

Phonology

Mlabri distinguishes rounding in its

back vowel A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be c ...

s. It does not have the

register Register or registration may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), ...

systems of some other Austroasiatic languages. All vowels occur long and short. /a/ is fronted after palato-alveolar consonants, and may approach . There is also a very short vowel that has limited distribution. Schwas occur in pre-tonic syllables, but may be

epenthetic In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the first syllable ('' prothesis''), the last syllable ('' paragoge''), or between two syllabic sounds in a word. The opposite process in whi ...

. There are several diphthongs. Consonants include the two implosive stops /ɓ/ and /ɗ/, attested in words such as ''ɓuʔ'' 'slow' and ''ɗɤŋ'' 'can'. These apparent implosive stops could be analyzed as pre-glottalized stops, as pre-glottalization is also a used for sonorants. Consonants also include voiceless sonorants, as in ''m̥ɛʔ'' 'new', ''n̥taʔ'' 'tail', ''ŋ̊uh'' 'sit', ''l̥ak'' '(there is) none', or ''w̥ep'' 'shoulder'. Arguably, these could be analyzed as a sequence of /h/ and a sonorant. is only attested in

minor syllable Primarily in Austroasiatic languages (also known as Mon–Khmer), in a typical word, a minor syllable, presyllable, or sesquisyllable, is a reduced (minor) syllable followed by a full tonic or stressed syllable. The minor syllable may be of the for ...

s. Mlabri has a different set of consonants which occur at the ends of syllables, including aspirated sonorants . The second is a trill, and the third more post-alveolar than palatal. Other final consonants are

References

External links

* Jørgen Rischel,
In what sense is Mlabri a West Khmuic language?
' * http://projekt.ht.lu.se/rwaai RWAAI (Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage) * http://hdl.handle.net/10050/00-0000-0000-0003-66E5-6@view Mlabri in RWAAI Digital Archive Languages of Thailand Khmuic languages Languages of Laos Endangered Austroasiatic languages {{AustroAsiatic-lang-stub

Phonology

References

Further reading

External links