The Mulam language () is a Kam–Sui language spoken mainly in

Luocheng County Luocheng Mulao Autonomous County ( zhuang: ,) is a county of northern Guangxi, China. It is under the administration of Hechi City. Administrative divisions There are 7 towns and 4 townships in the county: * Towns (): ** Dongmen () ** Long'an () ...

Hechi Hechi () is a prefecture-level city in the northwest of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China, bordering Guizhou to the north. In June 2002 it gained city status. Geography and climate Hechi is located in northwestern ...

, Northern Guangxi by the

Mulao people The Mulao people (; own name: ''Mulam'') are an ethnic group. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. In their name, ''Mulam'', ''mu''6 is a classifier for human beings and ''lam''1 (in some ...

. The greatest concentrations are in Dongmen and Siba communes. Their

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 ...

is ''mu6 lam1''.See Proto-Tai_language#Tones for an explanation of the tone codes. The Mulam also call themselves ''kjam1'', which is probably cognate with ''lam1'' and the

Dong people The Kam people, officially known in China as Dong people (; endonym: , ), a Kam–Sui people of Southern China, are one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. They are famed for their native-bred ''Kam ...

's autonym "Kam" (Wang & Zheng 1980). The Mulam language, like Dong, does not have voiced stop, but does have a phonemic distinction between unvoiced and voiced nasals and laterals. It has a system of eleven distinct

vowels A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...

. It is a tonal language with ten tones and 65% of its vocabulary is shared with the Zhuang and Dong languages. The language of Mulam leads to a comparison between two languages as

Graham Thurgood Graham Thurgood () is a retired professor of linguistics at California State University, Chico. Thurgood graduated with a Ph.D. in linguistics from University of California, Berkeley, where he studied under James Matisoff. Thurgood's areas of ...

states, "For 'headlouse', the KS forms are highly irregular: Kam, Mulam…" (Oceanic Linguistics, Vol. 33, No 2). This relates to the way in which one language can be interpreted through another language, which displays a level of diversity as they may derive different meanings from the translations. Withi
Mulam Phonology
there is a display of the syllables for Mulam that seems very difficult to decipher without having much knowledge of how they communicate with the dialect. The Mulam ethnic group traces back to the

Yuan Dynasty The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fift ...

(1271–1368), differing from the current society they have now as the people of Mulam eventually split in the

Qing Dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-spea ...

(1644–1912). The majority of the Mulam population are bilingual in the

Zhuang languages The Zhuang languages (; autonym: , pre-1982: , Sawndip: 話僮, from ''vah'', 'language' and ''Cuengh'', 'Zhuang'; ) are any of more than a dozen Tai languages spoken by the Zhuang people of Southern China in the province of Guangxi and adja ...

Dialects

The following Mulam dialects are described by Wang & Zheng (1980) (all of which are spoken in

Luocheng Mulao Autonomous County Luocheng Mulao Autonomous County ( zhuang: ,) is a county of northern Guangxi, China. It is under the administration of Hechi City. Administrative divisions There are 7 towns and 4 townships in the county: * Towns (): ** Dongmen () ** Long'an () ...

). * Dongmen 东门镇 (in Dayin 大银, Dafu 大福村, Le'e 勒俄村 etc.) * Long'an 龙岸镇 (in Liangsi 良泗, etc.) * Huangjin 黄金镇 (in Zhongjian 中间寨, etc.); documented in Qiu (2004) * Qiaotou 桥头镇 (in Dongnong 洞弄屯, etc.) * Siba 四把镇 (in Dawu 大梧, Miao'er 苗儿屯, Shuangzhai 双寨村, etc.); documented in Guangxi (2008) * Xiali 下里乡 (in Xiecun 谢村, etc.) The following comparison of Mulam dialects is from Ni Dabai (2010:221-222).Ni Dabai ��大白 2010. ''侗台语概论 n introduction to Kam-Tai languages'. Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House ��族出版社

References

External links

Mulam (Dongmen) word list from the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary DatabaseMulam (Siba) word list from the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary DatabaseThe Endangered Languages Project
* An audio sample of the Mulam language can be listened throug
Global Recordings Network

Mulam Phonology

{{Tai-Kadai languages Languages of China Kam–Sui languages Guangxi

Dialects

References

Further reading

External links