Jahai (Jehai) is an aboriginal
Mon–Khmer language
The Austroasiatic languages ( ) are a large language family spoken throughout Mainland Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia. These languages are natively spoken by the majority of the population in Vietnam and Cambodia, and by minority popu ...
spoken by the
Jahai people living in the
montane rainforests of northern
Peninsular Malaysia
Peninsular Malaysia, historically known as Malaya and also known as West Malaysia or the Malaysian Peninsula, is the western part of Malaysia that comprises the southern part of the Malay Peninsula on Mainland Southeast Asia and the list of isla ...
and
southernmost Thailand. It is the largest
Northern Aslian language. Though spoken by only a little more than 1,000 people, Jahai does not appear to be in immediate danger of extinction due to the prevalence of Jahai parents passing on the language to their children as their
mother tongue
A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongue'' refers ...
.
Jahai has a unique vocabulary for
describing odors.
Phonology
Vowels
Consonants
Syllable structure
On the surface level, the maximal syllable in Jahai is represented as CV(C). The
onset consonant is obligatorily required.
Stress and tone
The position of
stress always falls on the last syllable. Burenhult states there is no
tonal distinction in Jahai language.
Olfactory categories
Odor terms in Jahai are based on abstract qualities rather than specific sources (which is more common cross-linguistically, particularly in European languages).
See also
*
Kensiu language
Kensiu (Kensiw) is an Austroasiatic language of the Jahaic (Northern Aslian) subbranch. It is spoken by a small community of 300 people in Yala Province in southern Thailand and also reportedly by a community of approximately 300 speakers in ...
References
External links
* http://projekt.ht.lu.se/rwaai RWAAI (Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage)
*
http://hdl.handle.net/10050/00-0000-0000-0003-6701-4@view Jahai in RWAAI Digital Archive
Jahai DoReCo corpuscompiled by Niclas Burenhult. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and - for some texts - time-aligned morphological annotations.
{{AustroAsiatic-lang-stub
Languages of Malaysia
Languages of Thailand
Aslian languages