Tai Dón (, "The White Tai refer to themselves and their language as tay⁴ dɔn², probably because of the white blouses worn by the women. The usual word for 'white' in White Tai is dɔn²" (p. 8). Hudak, T. J. (2008). ''William J. Gedney’s comparative Tai source book''. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.), also known as Tai Khao () or White Tai, is a Tai language of northern

Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...

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 ...

and

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Classification

Tai Dón is classified as belonging to the Tai-Kadai language group, located in the Tai languages and

Southwestern Tai languages The Southwestern Tai or Thai languages are a branch of the Tai languages of Southeast Asia. Its languages include Central Thai (Siamese), Northern Thai (Lanna), Lao (including Isan), Shan and others. Classification The internal classificatio ...

subgroups.

Geographical distribution

In China, White Tai (Tai Khaw 傣皓) people are located in the following townships of Yunnan province, with about 40,000 people (Gao 1999).Gao Lishi 高立士. 1999. 傣族支系探微. 中南民族学院学报 (哲学社会科学版). 1999 年第1 期 (总第96 期). * Jinping County 金平县: Mengla Township 勐拉乡 and Zhemi Township 者米乡 (along the banks of the Zhemi River 者米河 and Tengtiao River 藤条) * Malipo County 麻栗坡县: Nanwenhe Township 南温河乡 * Maguan County 马关县: Dulong Town 都龙镇 * Jiangcheng County 江城县: Qushui Township 曲水乡 (along the banks of the Tuka River 土卡河)

Phonology

Each syllable has at least one onset, one

nucleus Nucleus (: nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to: *Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom *Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA Nucleu ...

, and one

tone Tone may refer to: Visual arts and color-related * Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory * Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color * Toning (coin), color change in coins * ...

.Hudak, T. J. (2008). ''William J. Gedney’s comparative Tai source book''. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. The following sections present the consonants, vowels, and tones in Tai Dón.

Consonants

Initial consonants

The following table presents the above consonant phonemes in words reported in Hudak's (2008) book. There are four consonant clusters that occur at the beginning of a syllable.

Final consonants

Vowels

Tai Dón has nine short vowels, and one long vowel. However, the short vowels are phonetically realized as long in final position (e.g., /e/ is phonetically ːin final position).

Tones

There are six tones on a smooth syllable (an open syllable or a closed syllable ending in a

sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels a ...

). Two of the six tones occur on a checked syllable (a syllable ending in a stop).

Writing System

Consonants

Initials

Shown below are consonants of Tai Don with two tonal registers (high on the top and low on the bottom). Tai Don Consonants in Tai Viet

Finals

Shown below are final consonants of Tai Don with short vowel on top and other vowels on the bottom. Tai Don Consonant Finals in Tai Viet

Onset

References

External links

Preliminary proposal to encode the Tai Khao script in UCS

A response to Kushim Jiang, “Preliminary proposal to encode the Tai Khao script in UCS”
* https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2022/22098-tai-don.pdf * https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2022/22099-tai-don-comment.pdf Languages of Vietnam Southwestern Tai languages {{tk-lang-stub