Semai () is a
Austroasiatic language
The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...
of western
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
spoken by about 60,438
Semai people
The Semai (also known as Mai Semai or Sengoi Hik) are a semi-sedentary ethnic group living in the center of the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia, known especially for their nonviolence. They speak Semai, an Austroasiatic language closely relat ...
. It is one of the few
Aslian languages
The Aslian languages () are the southernmost branch of Austroasiatic languages spoken on the Malay Peninsula. They are the languages of many of the ''Orang Asli'', the aboriginal inhabitants of the peninsula. The total number of native speakers o ...
which are not endangered, and even has 2,000 monolingual speakers. It is currently spoken by 3 main groups; the Northern Semai, Central Semai and the Southern Semai.
Phonology
One notable aspect of Semai
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
is its highly irregular pattern of expressive
reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...
, showing discontiguous copying from just the edges of the reduplicant's base, thus forming a minor
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
.
Vowels
Consonants
Examples
Examples of words in Semai include the following:
In popular culture
* ''Asli'' (2017), a film directed by David Liew, is about a
bi-racial
Mixed race people are people of more than one race or ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including ''multiethnic'', ''polyethnic'', occasionally ''bi-ethn ...
girl on a road to discover her cultural heritage, is the first film to use the Semai language in 50% of its dialogue.
References
Further reading
*Diffloth, Gerard. 1976a. Minor-Syllable Vocalism in Senoic Languages. In Philip N. Lenner, Laurence C. Thompson, and Stanley Starosta (eds.), ''Austroasiatic Studies, Part I'', 229–247. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press.
*Diffloth, Gerard. 1976b. Expressives in Semai. In Philip N. Lenner, Laurence C. Thompson, and Stanley Starosta (eds.), ''Austroasiatic Studies, Part I'', 249–264. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press.
*Hendricks, Sean. 2001. Bare-Consonant Reduplication Without Prosodic Templates: Expressive Reduplication in Semai. ''Journal of East Asian Linguistics'' 10: 287–306.
*Phillips, Timothy C. 2013. Linguistic Comparison of Semai Dialects. SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2013-010: 1–111.
External links
* http://projekt.ht.lu.se/rwaai RWAAI (Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage)
*
http://hdl.handle.net/10050/00-0000-0000-0003-66BF-5@view Semai in RWAAI Digital Archive
Semai dictionary of SIL International– online version accessible from Webonary.org
{{AustroAsiatic-lang-stub
Languages of Malaysia
Aslian languages