Hlai languages

Hlai
Hlai
Li
Native to	China
Region	Hainan
Ethnicity	Hlai
Native speakers	(667,000 cited 1999)
Language family	Kra–Dai Hlai–Jiamao? Hlai; ;
Early form	Proto-Hlai (reconstructed)
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either:; lic – Hlai; cuq – Cun
Glottolog	nucl1241
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The Hlai languages (Chinese: 黎はじむ语; pinyin: Líyǔ) are a primary branch of the Kra–Dai language family spoken in the mountains of central and south-central Hainan in China by the Hlai people, not to be confused with the colloquial name for the Leizhou branch of Min Chinese (Chinese: 黎はじむ话; pinyin: Líhuà). They include Cun, whose speakers are ethnically distinct.^[2] A quarter of Hlai speakers are monolingual. None of the Hlai languages had a writing system until the 1950s, when the Latin script was adopted for Ha.

Classification

Norquest (2007) classifies the Hlai languages as follows.^[3] Individual languages are highlighted in bold. There are some 750,000 Hlai speakers.

Proto-Hlai
- Bouhin (Hēitǔ 黑土こくど) – 73,000
- Greater Hlai
  - Ha Em 哈炎 (Zhōngshā 中ちゅう沙すな) – 193,000
  - Central Hlai
    - East Central Hlai – 344,000
      - Lauhut (Bǎodìng 保ほ定じょう) – 166,000, the basis of the literary language
      - Qi 杞 (also known as Gei) – 178,000
        Tongzha (Tōngshí 通つう什) – 125,000
        
        Zandui (Qiànduì 堑对) – 29,000
        
        Bǎotíng 保ほ亭てい – 24,000
    - North Central Hlai – 136,500
      - Northwest Central Hlai – 62,500
        Cun 村むら语 (Ngan Fon, Gēlóng 仡隆) – 60,000
        
        Nàdòu 那な斗と (Dōngfāng 东方) – 2,500
      - Northeast Central Hlai – 74,000
        Měifú 美び孚まこと (Moifau) – 30,000
        Chāngjiāng 昌江まさえ
        
        Moyfaw (Xīfāng 西方せいほう)
        
        Rùn 润 (Zwn; also known as Běndì 本地ほんじ) – 44,000
        Báishā 白しろ沙すな – 36,000
        
        Yuánmén 元もと门 – 8,000

Nadou is spoken by approximately 4,000 people in the two villages of Nàdòu 那な斗と村むら (in Xīnlóng Town 新しん龙镇) and Yuè 月村げっそん (in Bāsuǒ Town 八はち所しょ镇), in Dongfang, Hainan. Speakers refer to themselves as lai¹¹ and are officially classified by the Chinese government as ethnic Han Chinese.^[4]

Jiāmào 加茂かも (52,000 speakers) is a divergent Kra-Dai language with a Hlai superstratum and a non-Hlai substratum.^[3]

Reconstruction

The Proto-Hlai language is the reconstructed ancestor of the Hlai languages. Proto-Hlai reconstructions include those of Matisoff (1988), Thurgood (1991), Ostapirat (2004), and Norquest (2007).

Phonology

The following displays the phonological features of the modern Hlai dialects:^[5]^[6]^[7]

Consonants

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Alveolar	Alveolo- palatal	Velar		Glottal
		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Alveolar	Alveolo- palatal	plain	lab.	plain	lab.	pal.
Plosive	voiceless	p		t	ȶ	k	kʷ	ʔ
	aspirated	pʰ		tʰ		kʰ	kʰʷ
	voiced					ɡ	ɡʷ
	implosive	ɓ		ɗ
Affricate	voiceless			t͡s
Affricate	aspirated			t͡sʰ
Fricative	voiceless		f	s		x		h	hʷ	hʲ
	voiced		v	z		ɣ
	lateral			ɬ
Nasal		m	(ɱ)	n	ȵ	ŋ	ŋʷ
Trill				r
Approximant				l				ˀj	ˀw

[ɬ], [f] mainly occur word-initially among various dialects. [ɬ] may also be realized as [tɬ].
[x], [ɣ] mainly occur among the Xifang dialects.
[ɣ] can also occur as an allophone of /ɡ/.
/t͡s/, /t͡sʰ/, /z/ are pronounced as alveolo-palatal sounds [t͡ɕ], [t͡ɕʰ], [ɕ], among other various dialects.
/r/ can have allophones as [ɾ, dɾ].
For a brief period of time Yuanmen distinguished /m/ and /ɱ/ after */ŋw/ became /ɱ/ which soon merged with /m/.^[8]

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		ɯ	u
Mid	e	ə	o
Mid	ɛ	ə	ɔ
Low		a

Among other Hlai dialects, /a, i, e, o/ can have allophones of [ɐ, ɪ, ɛ, ɔ].
Vowel sounds /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are common among the Baisha and Jiamao dialects.
/ə/ occurs among some dialects.

History

Liang & Zhang (1996:18–21)^[9] conclude that the original homeland of the Hlai languages was the Leizhou Peninsula, and estimate that the Hlai had migrated across the Hainan Strait to Hainan Island about 4,000 years before present.^[9]

Notes

^ Hlai at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
Cun at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ Ethnologue mistakenly lists Cun among the Kra languages.
^ ^a ^b Norquest, Peter K. (2007). A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Hlai (Ph.D. thesis). University of Arizona. hdl:10150/194203.
^ Fu, Changzhong 符ふ昌あきら忠ちゅう (2020). Nadouyu yanjiu 那な斗と语研究けんきゅう. Beijing: Minzu chubanshe 民族みんぞく出版しゅっぱん社しゃ. OCLC 1294545717.
^ Ostapirat, Weera (2008). "The Hlai Language". In Diller, Anthony V. N.; Edmondson, Jerold A.; Luo, Yongxian (eds.). The Tai-Kadai Languages. London & New York: Routledge. pp. 623–652.
^ Yuan, Zhongshu 苑えん中ちゅう树, ed. (1994). Líyǔ yǔfǎ gāngyào 黎はじむ语语法ほう纲要 [An Outline of Li Grammar] (in Chinese). Beijing: Zhongyang minzu daxue chubanshe. pp. 1–10.
^ Ouyang, Jueya 欧おう阳觉亚 (1980). Líyǔ jiǎnzhì 黎はじむ语简志こころざし [Description of the Li language] (in Chinese). Beijing: Minzu chubanshe.
^ Norquest (2007), p. 106
^ ^a ^b Liang, Min 梁りょう敏さとし; Zhang, Junru 张均如 (1996). Dòng tái yǔzú gàilùn 侗台语族概がい论 [An Introduction to the Kam–Tai Languages] (in Chinese). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. ISBN 9787500416814.

References

Ostapirat, Weera (2005). "The Cun Language, by Ouyang Jueya. Shanghai Far East Publishers. 1998" (PDF). Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 28 (1): 99–105.
Ouyang, Jueya 欧おう阳觉亚; Zheng, Yiqing 郑贻青あお (1983). Líyǔ diàochá yánjiū 黎はじむ语调查研究けんきゅう [Li Language Investigation and Research] (in Chinese). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe.

External links

Bible recordings in various Hlai languages
ABVD: Proto-Hlai word list
Hlai-language Swadesh vocabulary list of basic words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
Hlai languages learning website (both in Mandarin Chinese and English)

[e18-1] Hlai at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
Cun at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)

[2] Ethnologue mistakenly lists Cun among the Kra languages.

[Norquest_2007-3] Norquest, Peter K. (2007). A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Hlai (Ph.D. thesis). University of Arizona. hdl:10150/194203.

[4] Fu, Changzhong 符ふ昌あきら忠ちゅう (2020). Nadouyu yanjiu 那な斗と语研究けんきゅう. Beijing: Minzu chubanshe 民族みんぞく出版しゅっぱん社しゃ. OCLC 1294545717.

[5] Ostapirat, Weera (2008). "The Hlai Language". In Diller, Anthony V. N.; Edmondson, Jerold A.; Luo, Yongxian (eds.). The Tai-Kadai Languages. London & New York: Routledge. pp. 623–652.

[6] Yuan, Zhongshu 苑えん中ちゅう树, ed. (1994). Líyǔ yǔfǎ gāngyào 黎はじむ语语法ほう纲要 [An Outline of Li Grammar] (in Chinese). Beijing: Zhongyang minzu daxue chubanshe. pp. 1–10.

[7] Ouyang, Jueya 欧おう阳觉亚 (1980). Líyǔ jiǎnzhì 黎はじむ语简志こころざし [Description of the Li language] (in Chinese). Beijing: Minzu chubanshe.

[8] Norquest (2007), p. 106

[Liang_1996-9] Liang, Min 梁りょう敏さとし; Zhang, Junru 张均如 (1996). Dòng tái yǔzú gàilùn 侗台语族概がい论 [An Introduction to the Kam–Tai Languages] (in Chinese). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. ISBN 9787500416814.

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