Hlai languages

Hlai
Li
  Ha dialect
  Qi dialect
  Run dialect
  Meifu dialect
  Jiamao language
Native toChina
RegionHainan
EthnicityHlai
Native speakers
(667,000 cited 1999)
Kra–Dai
Early form
Proto-Hlai (reconstructed)
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
lic – Hlai
cuq – Cun
Glottolognucl1241
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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. There are some 750,000 Hlai speakers.

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

Bilabial Labio-
dental		 Alveolar Alveolo-
palatal		 Velar Glottal
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
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

Vowels

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

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.

According to Ostapirat (2026), Hlai originated much further to the southwest from north-central Vietnam. The ancestors of present-day Hlai speakers migrated directly to southern Hainan but not northern Hainan, since they followed a migration route that skipped the Leizhou Peninsula.

See also

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. 1 2 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. 1 2 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.
  10. ↑ Ostapirat, Weera (2026). "Kra-Dai Migration and Austro-Tai Numerals". In Kikusawa, Ritsuko; Okamoto, Susumu; Suzuki, Hiroyuki (eds.). Establishing Spatiotemporal Linguistics: Toward an Interdisciplinary Approach to the History of Language and of Human Movement. Brill. p. 41–54. doi:10.1163/9789004762077-004. ISBN 978-90-04-76207-7.

References

Further reading