Yei Zhuang is a

Northern Tai The Northern Tai languages are an established branch of the Tai languages of Southeast Asia. They include the northern Zhuang languages and Bouyei of China, Tai Mène of Laos and Yoy of Thailand. Languages Ethnologue ''Ethnologue'' distingui ...

language complex spoken in

Wenshan Prefecture Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture is an autonomous prefecture in southeastern Yunnan Province, People's Republic of China and the easternmost prefecture-level division of the province. It borders Baise, Guangxi to the east, Vietnam's ...

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

. Its speakers are also known as the Sha (沙族).

Distribution

, Yei Zhuang dialects are spoken in Funing and

Guangnan Guangnan County (; Zhuang: ) is located in Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan province, China. The seat of Guangnan, known today as Liancheng (), was the heart of the Gouding Kingdom () that lasted approximately 400 years, fr ...

counties (also in

Guangxi Guangxi (; ; alternately romanized as Kwanghsi; ; za, Gvangjsih, italics=yes), officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (GZAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in South China and bordering Vietnam ...

to the east and north), as well as Qiubei (probably also in

Qujing Qujing () is a prefecture-level city in the east of Yunnan province, China, bordering Guizhou province to the east and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to the southeast; thus, it was called "Key between Yunnan and Guizhou" () and "Throat of Y ...

Municipality to the north). The largest concentrations of Yei Zhuang speakers are found in Qiubei (80% of total Zhuang population) and Funing (50% of total Zhuang population) counties (Johnson 2011a:43). Po-ai, a Tai language of Funing County described 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 r ...

in the mid-1900s, was determined by Johnson (2011b) to be a Yei Zhuang dialect.

Names

Below are various names (both autonyms and exonyms) for speakers of Yei Zhuang (Johnson 2011a:43). *pu Nong (濮侬) * (Qiubei) *bu Yai (布雅衣) *bu Yei (布依, 布瑞, 布越) *Shazu (沙族) or Sharen (沙人) *Baisha (白沙) *Nongqianbeng (侬迁绷) *Zhongjia (仲家) Many of these are names of Bouyei as well.

Characteristics

There are no

palatalized consonants In phonetics, palatalization (, also ) or palatization is a way of pronouncing a consonant in which part of the tongue is moved close to the hard palate. Consonants pronounced this way are said to be palatalized and are transcribed in the Inter ...

in Qiubei Zhuang. /pj/ in

standard Zhuang Standard Zhuang (autonym: , , (pre-1982: ; Sawndip: ); ) is the official standardized form of the Zhuang languages, which are a branch of the Northern Tai languages. Its pronunciation is based on that of the Yongbei Zhuang dialect of Shu ...

is /p/, as in /pja1/ "fish", pjak7 "vegetable" is /pa/1, /pak/7.See Proto-Tai_language#Tones for an explanation of the tone codes. /mj/ is m or n，for example mjaːk3 "slippery", mjaːi2 "saliva" as /ma6/, /naːi2/. /kj/ is merged into k or t，for example kjaːŋ1 "middle", kja4(orphan) is /kaːŋ3/, /tsa4/. The

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...

k before i, e is changed to ts, for instance ki3 "several", kiːŋ2 (triangular cooker), ke5 "old" as /tʃi1/, /tʃiːŋ2/, /tʃes/.

References

* Johnson, Eric C. 2011a.
The Southern Zhuang Languages of Yunnan Province's Wenshan Prefecture from a Sociolinguistic Perspective
" orking paper S.l.: s.n. 49 pages. * Johnson, Eric C. 2011b.
A Lexical and Phonological Comparison of the Central Taic Languages of Wenshan Prefecture, China: Getting More Out of Language Survey Wordlists Than Just Lexical Similarity Percentages.
SIL Electronic Working Papers 2011-005: 170. {{Tai-Kadai languages Tai languages