The Katu people (also Co Tu, Ca Tang; vi, người Cơ Tu;

Katu KATU (channel 2) is a television station in Portland, Oregon, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside La Grande–licensed Univision affiliate KUNP (channel 16). Both stations share studios on N ...

: ) are an ethnic group of about 102,551 who live in eastern Laos and central Vietnam. Numbered among the

Katuic peoples The Katuic peoples live mainly in central Vietnam's Truong Son region and the highlands of south eastern Laos and speak the Katuic languages. The peoples include the Katu, Ta Oi, Pacoh, Bru (Van Kieu) in Vietnam and the Kuy. The Katuic groups i ...

, they speak a

Mon-Khmer 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 th ...

language.

Laos

The Katu in Laos live in Sekong Province along the upper

Sekong River :''Cong River (''sông Công'') is a river in Central Vietnam'' The Kong River, also known as the Xe Kong or the Se Kong ( Lao: ເຊກອງ ''Se Kong'', ( Khmer:''សេកុង''(official) or ''ស្រែគង្គ''(Khmerization)), Vi ...

and in the highland basin of the Song Boung river watershed along the border with Vietnam's Quảng Nam and Thừa Thiên–Huế Provinces. There were 28,378 of them in Laos in 2015.

Vietnam

The Vietnamese government's official name for the Katu ethnic group is "Co Tu". Within Vietnam, most Katu live in the provinces of Thừa Thiên–Huế and Quảng Nam. The Katu in Vietnam numbered 50,458 in the 1999 census, 61,588 in the 2009 census, and 74,173 in the 2019 census.Census 2009
, Hanoi, June 2010. Table 5 (POPULATION BY URBAN/RURAL RESIDENCE, SEX, ETHNIC GROUP, SOCIO-ECONOMIC REGION AND PROVINCE/CITY, 1/4/2009), pp. 134. Access Feb 12, 2011. The Katu typically serve rice cooked in bamboo stems such as ''zăr'', ''aví hor'', ''koo dep'', ''koo g'đhoong'', and ''cha chắc'', and drink a beverage called ''tavak''. Their famous dances are ''tung tung'' (performed by males) and ''ya yá'' (performed by females). They play ''h'roa'' in ordinary life. Traditional Katu homes are on stilts and those who live on the Laotian border are known for growing

jute Jute is a long, soft, shiny bast fiber that can be spun into coarse, strong threads. It is produced from flowering plants in the genus ''Corchorus'', which is in the mallow family Malvaceae. The primary source of the fiber is ''Corchorus olit ...

and weaving. Some 15,000 Katu in Thừa Thiên–Huế speak Phuong, a Katuic dialect often recognized as a separate language.Phuong
at ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

'' (18th ed., 2015)

References

*Lưu Hùng. 2007. ''A contribution to Katu ethnography''. Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản Thế Giới. {{Authority control Indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia Ethnic groups in Vietnam Ethnic groups in Laos