Urak Lawoi’ language

Urak Lawoi’ or Urak Lawoc (Urak Lawoi': , ) is an Aboriginal Malay language of southern Thailand.

The Orang (Suku) Laut who live between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula speak divergent Malayic lects, which bear some intriguing connections to various Sumatran Malay varieties.

Phonology and orthography

Vowels

* In closed syllables, some vowels change their quality:
** becomes ( 'space').
** becomes ( 'return').
** becomes ( 'stomach').
* Epenthetic and were added after high vowels , respectively ( 'light', 'to throw away').
* Vowels are somewhat lengthened in stressed open syllables allophonically.
* Vowels other than are slightly nasalized after nasal consonant, next syllables containing in upsets are further nasalized ( 'to cry', 'body, self').

Notes: In the Thai script, the left column represents diacritics for open syllables, while the right one for closed syllables. For syllables with vowel ''ö'', before consonants ''k'', ''m'', ''n'', ''ng'', ''p'', and ''t'', the vowel is not reflected. Similarly, the diacritic for ''a'' is not used before ''q''. Any vowels with separate closed syllable diacritics have inherent value of when not used with succeeding consonant.

Consonants

* and allophones are influenced by Thai, whereas is influenced by Malay.
* Aspirated consonants and only appear in loanwords (that are mostly from Thai).
* Phonetically, and is pronounced , and (after back vowels and ) or (after front vowels), respectively, in syllable finals.
* becomes after , otherwise in syllable-final positions ( 'space' vs. 'doctor').
* is compensatorily lengthened to phonetically long . In stressed positions, the vowel cluster fluctuates between .
* The coda stop after a front vowel becomes ( 'sheep').
* The stops initially in a syllable with a back vowel and the coda labialized and , respectively ( 'to utter').

* and could be treated as a part of diphthongs or triphthongs.
* only exists in Phuket dialect.

Stress and Intonation

Urak Lawoi' does not have tones, except in Thai loans. Words are usually stressed in penultimate syllable, except if it the expected stress is placed in pre-syllable (e.g. open syllables containing , but not ) the stress moves into the next syllable. Urak Lawoi' also has the intonation for the whole sentence. For example, the interrogative sentences have raising intonation, and the negative sentences have lower-pitch intonation.

References

Further reading

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* ศูนย์ศึกษาและฟื้นฟูภาษาและวัฒนธรรมในภาวะวิกฤต. (2020). ''คู่มือระบบเขียนภาษาอูรักลาโวยจอักษรไทย ฉบับมหาวิทยาลัยมหิดล.'' นครปฐม: สถาบันวิจัยภาษาและวัฒนธรรมเอเชีย มหาวิทยาลัยมหิดล.

Malayic languages
Languages of Thailand

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