Jahai language

Jahai (Jehai) is an aboriginal Mon–Khmer language spoken by the Jahai people living in the montane rainforests of northern Peninsular Malaysia and southernmost Thailand. It is the largest Northern Aslian language. Though spoken by only a little more than 1,000 people, Jahai does not appear to be in immediate danger of extinction due to the prevalence of Jahai parents passing on the language to their children as their mother tongue.

Jahai has a unique vocabulary for describing odors.

On the surface level, the maximal syllable in Jahai is represented as CV(C). The onset consonant is obligatorily required.

The position of stress always falls on the last syllable. Burenhult states there is no tonal distinction in Jahai language.

Odor terms in Jahai are based on abstract qualities rather than specific sources (which is more common cross-linguistically, particularly in European languages).

• Kensiu language

• http://projekt.ht.lu.se/rwaai RWAAI (Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage)
• http://hdl.handle.net/10050/00-0000-0000-0003-6701-4@view Jahai in RWAAI Digital Archive
• Jahai DoReCo corpus compiled by Niclas Burenhult. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and - for some texts - time-aligned morphological annotations.