Amis (Sowal no ʼAmis or Pangcah) is a Formosan language spoken by the Amis (or Ami), an indigenous people living along the east coast of Taiwan. Amis is the largest of the Formosan languages. It is spoken between Hualien in the north and Taitung in the south, with another population of speakers in the Hengchun Peninsula near the southern end of the island. The northern varieties are considered to be separate languages.
Government services in counties where many Amis people live in Taiwan broadcast in Amis alongside Mandarin, such as at the Hualien and Taitung railway stations. However, few Amis under the age of 20 spoke the language in 1995. It is not known how many of the 200,000 ethnic Amis speak the language. A third of the aboriginal Taiwanese population speaks Amis.[citation needed]
Dialects
Amis is a dialect cluster. There are five dialects: Southern Amis, Tavalong-Vataan, Central Amis, Chengkung-Kwangshan, and Northern Amis (Nanshi Amis, which includes Nataoran).
Sakizaya is a moribund language spoken among the northernmost ethnic Amis. It is not mutually intelligible with the Northern Amis dialect.
Phonology
The following discussion covers the central dialect of Amis.
The voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ only occurs in some loanwords, such as rigi/riˈɣiʔ/ 'ridge between sections of a rice field'.
The epiglottal consonants have proven difficult to describe, with some sources describing them as pharyngeal or even uvular as opposed to epiglottal. It is unclear if [h] is a separate phoneme from [ʜ] or if it's just an allophone of it. The voiceless pharyngeal fricative[ħ] is a word-final allophone of /ʜ/.
The voiceless plosives /ptkʡ/ and the affricate /t͡s/ are released in clusters, so that cecay "one" is pronounced [t͡sᵊt͡saj]; as is /s/: sepat "four" is [sᵊpatʰ]. The glottal stop is an exception, frequently having no audible release in final position. The voiced fricatives, /vɮɣ/ (the latter found only in loanwords) are devoiced to [fɬx] in utterance-final and sometimes initial position. /ɮ/ may be interdental or post-dental. The sibilants, /t͡ss/, are optionally palatalized ([t͡ɕɕ]) before /i/. /j/ does not occur in word-initial position. /ɺ/ is often post-alveolar, and in final position it is released: [ʡuʡuɺ̠ᵊ] "fog".
/ɮ/ shows dramatic dialectal variation. In Fengbin, a town in the center of Amis territory, it is pronounced as a median dental fricative, [ð], whereas in the town of Kangko, only 15km (9.3mi) away, it is a lateral[ɮ̪]. In Northern Amis, it is a plosive [d̪], which may be laxed to [ð] intervocalically. The epiglottals are also reported to have different pronunciations in the north, but the descriptions are contradictory. In Central Amis, /ʜ/ is always voiceless and /ʡ/ is often accompanied by vibrations that suggest it involves an epiglottal trill [ʢ]. Edmondson and Elsing report that these are true epiglottals initially and medially, but in utterance-final position they are epiglotto–pharyngeal.
Sakizaya, considered to be a separate language, contrasts a voiced /z/ with voiceless /s/.
In the practical orthography, /ts/ is written ⟨c⟩, /j/⟨y⟩, /ʡ/⟨ʼ⟩, /ʔ/⟨^⟩, /ɮ/⟨d⟩, /ŋ/⟨ng⟩, and /ʜ/⟨x⟩.
Amis has three common vowels, /iau/. Despite the fact that a great deal of latitude is afforded by only needing to distinguish three vowels, Amis vowels stay close to their cardinal values, though there is more movement of /a/ and /u/ toward each other (tending to the [o] range) than there is in front-vowel space (in the [e] range).
A voiceless epenthetic schwa optionally breaks up consonant clusters, as noted above. However, there are a small number of words where a short schwa (written e) may be phonemic. No contrast involving the schwa is known, and if it is also epenthetic, then Amis has words with no phonemic vowels at all. Examples of this e are malmes "sad", pronounced [maɺə̆mːə̆s], and ’nem "six", pronounced [ʡnə̆m] or [ʡə̆nə̆m].
Chiyu mahufuchay tu tamlaw, maemin pingdeng ichunyan a kngli. Iraay chaira lishing a naay a naay a harateng, pimaulahsha u harateng nu kaka shafa.
English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
↑Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). "Amis". Glottolog . Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
Edmondson, Jerold A.; Esling, John H. (2006). "The Valves of the Throat and Their Functioning in Tone, Vocal Register and Stress: Laryngoscopic Case Studies". Phonology. 23 (2): 157–191. doi:10.1017/S095267570600087X. S2CID62531440.
Gils, Rémy (2010). Parlons amis: Une langue aborigène de Taïwan (in French). Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN978-2-296-11465-4.
Sing 'Olam (2011). Āměiyǔ jiǎnmíng cídiǎn / O Citing no Pangcah 阿美語簡明詞典 / O Citing no Pangcah [Amis Concise Dictionary] (in Chinese). Taibei Shi: Taiwan zuqun muyu tuixing weiyuanhui. ISBN9789868693630.
Sing 'Olam (2014). Āměizúyǔ shíyòng yǔfǎ: Zēngqiáng yǔfǎ yǔ cíhuì / O Sakafana' to Rayray to Sowal no 'Amis 阿美族語實用語法：增強語法與詞彙 / O Sakafana' to Rayray to Sowal no 'Amis [Amis Practical Grammar: Enhanced Grammar and Vocabulary] (in Chinese). Taibei Shi: Taiwan zuqun muyu tuixing weiyuanhui. ISBN9789868298606.
Wu, Jing-lan Joy (2006). Verb Classification, Case Marking, and Grammatical Relations in Amis (PhD thesis). The State University of New York at Buffalo.
Wu, Jing-lan 吳靜蘭 (2018). Āměiyǔ yǔfǎ gàilùn 阿美語語法概論[Introduction to Amis Grammar] (in Chinese). Xinbei Shi: Yuanzhu minzu weiyuanhui. ISBN978-986-05-5682-7. Archived from the original on 2021-05-21. Retrieved 2021-05-21– via alilin.apc.gov.tw.
Yuánzhùmínzú yǔyán xiànshàng cídiǎn 原住民族語言線上詞典(in Chinese) – Amis search page at the "Aboriginal language online dictionary" website of the Indigenous Languages Research and Development Foundation
"amis du Nord / North-Amis". Langues et civilisations à tradition orale (LACITO) (in French and English). Archived from the original on 2021-08-06. Retrieved 2020-05-29.
