Hlai languages

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.

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

	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

[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/.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		ɯ	u
Mid	e	ə	o
ɛ	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) 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.

Notes

Ostapirat, Weera (2005). (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.

External links

Hlai-language Swadesh vocabulary list of basic words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
(both in Mandarin Chinese and English)