The Mak language (;

autonym Autonym may refer to: * Autonym, the name used by a person to refer to themselves or their language; see Exonym and endonym * Autonym (botany), an automatically created infrageneric or infraspecific name See also * Nominotypical subspecies, in zo ...

: ''ʔai3 maːk8'')See Proto-Tai language#Tones for an explanation of the tone numbers. is a Kam–Sui language spoken in

Libo County Libo County () is a county of southern Guizhou province, China, bordering Guangxi to the south. It is under the administration of the Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. Geography The county is located in the remote southeastern corner ...

, Qiannan Prefecture,

Guizhou Guizhou (; formerly Kweichow) is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the center of the province. Guizhou borders the autonomous region of Guangxi to the ...

, China. It is spoken mainly in the four townships of Yangfeng (羊/阳风乡, including Dali 大利村 and Xinchang 新场村 dialects), Fangcun (方村), Jialiang (甲良), and Diwo (地莪) in Jialiang District (甲良),

. Mak speakers can also be found in

Dushan County Dushan County () is a county of 346,000 people (2007) in Guizhou province, China. It is under the administration of Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, in the south of the province, bordering Guangxi to the south. The county seat is the t ...

. Mak is spoken alongside Ai-Cham and Bouyei. The Mak are officially classified as Bouyei by the Chinese government. Yang (2000) considers Ai-Cham and Mak to be different dialects of the same language. The Fangcun dialect was first studied by

Fang-Kuei Li Li Fang-Kuei (Chinese: 李方桂, Cantonese: Lei5 Fong1 Gwai3 ej˩˨ fɔŋ˦ gʷaj˧, Mandarin: Lǐ Fāngguì i˨ faŋ˦ gʷej˥˩ 20 August 190221 August 1987) was a Chinese linguist known for his studies of the varieties of Chinese, his rec ...

in 1942, and the Yangfeng dialect was studied in the 1980s by Dabai Ni of the

Minzu University of China Minzu University of China (MUC, ) is a national public university in Haidian District, Beijing, China designated for ethnic minorities in China. MUC was selected as one of national key universities to directly receive funding from Double First ...

. Ni also noted that the Mak people only sing Bouyei folk songs, and that about 5,000 Mak people have shifted to the Bouyei language.

References

* * * Languages of China Kam–Sui languages Guizhou {{tk-lang-stub