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The Hlai languages (Chinese: 黎语; 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: 黎话; pinyin: Líhuà). They include Cun, whose speakers are ethnically distinct. 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. Individual languages are highlighted in bold. There are some 750,000 Hlai speakers.

• Proto-Hlai
  • Bouhin (Hēitǔ 黑土) – 73,000
  • Greater Hlai
    • Ha Em 哈炎 (Zhōngshā 中沙) – 193,000
    • Central Hlai
      • East Central Hlai – 344,000
        • Lauhut (Bǎodìng 保定) – 166,000, the basis of the literary language
        • Qi 杞 (also known as Gei) – 178,000
          • Tongzha (Tōngshí 通什) – 125,000
          • Zandui (Qiànduì 堑对) – 29,000
          • Bǎotíng 保亭 – 24,000
      • North Central Hlai – 136,500
        • Northwest Central Hlai – 62,500
          • Cun 村语 (Ngan Fon, Gēlóng 仡隆) – 60,000
          • Nàdòu 那斗 (Dōngfāng 东方) – 2,500
        • Northeast Central Hlai – 74,000
          • Měifú 美孚 (Moifau) – 30,000
            • Chāngjiāng 昌江
            • Moyfaw (Xīfāng 西方)
          • Rùn 润 (Zwn; also known as Běndì 本地) – 44,000
            • Báishā 白沙 – 36,000
            • Yuánmén 元门 – 8,000

Nadou is spoken by approximately 4,000 people in the two villages of Nàdòu 那斗村 (in Xīnlóng Town 新龙镇) and Yuè 月村 (in Bāsuǒ Town 八所镇), in Dongfang, Hainan. Speakers refer to themselves as lai¹¹ and are officially classified by the Chinese government as ethnic Han Chinese.

Jiāmào 加茂 (52,000 speakers) is a divergent Kra-Dai language with a Hlai superstratum and a non-Hlai substratum.

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:

Consonants

• , mainly occur word-initially among various dialects. may also be realized as .
• , mainly occur among the Xifang dialects.
• can also occur as an allophone of /ɡ/.
• /t͡s/, /t͡sʰ/, /z/ are pronounced as alveolo-palatal sounds , , , among other various dialects.
• /r/ can have allophones as .
• For a brief period of time Yuanmen distinguished /m/ and /ɱ/ after */ŋw/ became /ɱ/ which soon merged with /m/.

Vowels

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

History

Liang & Zhang (1996:18–21) 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.

See also

• Proto-Hlai reconstructions (Wiktionary)
• Has Hlai grammar
• Hlai people
• Proto-Hlai language

Notes

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.
3. ^ Norquest, Peter K. (2007). A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Hlai (Ph.D. thesis). University of Arizona. hdl:10150/194203.
4. Fu, Changzhong 符昌忠 (2020). Nadouyu yanjiu 那斗语研究. Beijing: Minzu chubanshe 民族出版社. 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 苑中树, ed. (1994). Líyǔ yǔfǎ gāngyào 黎语语法纲要 [An Outline of Li Grammar] (in Chinese). Beijing: Zhongyang minzu daxue chubanshe. pp. 1–10.
7. Ouyang, Jueya 欧阳觉亚 (1980). Líyǔ jiǎnzhì 黎语简志 [Description of the Li language] (in Chinese). Beijing: Minzu chubanshe.
8. Norquest (2007), p. 106
9. ^ Liang, Min 梁敏; Zhang, Junru 张均如 (1996). Dòng tái yǔzú gàilùn 侗台语族概论 [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 欧阳觉亚; Zheng, Yiqing 郑贻青 (1983). Líyǔ diàochá yánjiū 黎语调查研究 [Li Language Investigation and Research] (in Chinese). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe.

Further reading

• Miyake, Marc. 2013. The other Kra-Dai numerals (Parts 1, 2).
• Miyake, Marc. 2011. Is Jiamao Hlai?
• Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hlai -ɯ.
• Miyake, Marc. 2008. Implosives on Hainan (Parts 1, 2).
• Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hlai initial verification.
• Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hlai initial glides.
• Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hlai palatal codas.
• 中国科学院少数民族语言调查第一工作队海南分队编. 1957. Guanyu huafen Liyu fangyan he chuangzuo Liwen de yijian 关于划分黎语方言和创作黎文的意见. 黎族语言文字问题科学讨论会.
• Norquest, Peter K. 2015. A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Hlai. Languages of Asia, Volume 13. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-30052-1

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)

• Hlai languages
• Languages of Hainan