The Mak language (;
autonym: ''ʔai3 maːk8'')
[See Proto-Tai language#Tones for an explanation of the tone numbers.] is a
Kam–Sui language spoken in
Libo County
Libo County () is a county of southern Guizhou province, China, bordering Guangxi to the south. It is under the administration of the Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture.
Geography
The county is located in the remote southeastern corner o ...
,
Qiannan Prefecture,
Guizhou
)
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, map_alt = Map showing the location of Guizhou Province
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,
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 ...
. It is spoken mainly in the four townships of Yangfeng (羊/阳风乡, including Dali 大利村 and Xinchang 新场村 dialects), Fangcun (方村), Jialiang (甲良), and Diwo (地莪) in Jialiang District (甲良),
Libo County
Libo County () is a county of southern Guizhou province, China, bordering Guangxi to the south. It is under the administration of the Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture.
Geography
The county is located in the remote southeastern corner o ...
. Mak speakers can also be found in
Dushan County. Mak is spoken alongside
Ai-Cham and
Bouyei.
The Mak, also called Mojia () in Chinese, are officially classified as
Bouyei by the Chinese government.
Yang (2000) considers
Ai-Cham and Mak to be different dialects of the same language.
The Fangcun dialect was first studied by
Fang-Kuei Li in 1942, and the Yangfeng dialect was studied in the 1980s by Dabai Ni of the
Minzu University of China.
Ni also noted that the Mak people only sing Bouyei folk songs, and that about 5,000 Mak people have shifted to the Bouyei language.
Dialects
Wu et al. (2016) contains a 2,531-item word list of 5 Mak dialects. Wu et al. (2016) also has data tables comparing a few hundred words in
Bouyei,
Sui, and Mak. The Mak dialects compared, each of which are spoken in their respective townships, are:
*Jialiang 甲良
*Fangcun 方村
*Yangfeng 阳凤
*Boyao 播尧 (Diwo 地莪)
*Jichang 基长
References
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*
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Languages of Guizhou
Kam–Sui languages
{{TaiKadai-lang-stub