Tai Dón (, "The White Tai refer to themselves and their language as tay⁴ dɔn², probably because of the white blouses worn by the women. The usual word for 'white' in White Tai is dɔn²" (p. 8). Hudak, T. J. (2008). ''William J. Gedney’s comparative Tai source book''. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.), also known as Tai Khao () or White Tai, is a Tai languages, Tai language of northern Vietnam, Laos and China.

Classification

Tai Dón is classified as belonging to the Tai-Kadai language group, located in the Tai languages and Southwestern Tai languages subgroups.

Geographical distribution

In China, White Tai (Tai Khaw 傣皓) people are located in the following townships of Yunnan province, with about 40,000 people (Gao 1999).Gao Lishi 高立士. 1999. 傣族支系探微. 中南民族学院学报 (哲学社会科学版). 1999 年第1 期 (总第96 期). *Jinping Miao, Yao, and Dai Autonomous County, Jinping County 金平县: Mengla Township 勐拉乡 and Zhemi Township 者米乡 (along the banks of the Zhemi River 者米河 and Tengtiao River 藤条) *Malipo County 麻栗坡县: Nanwenhe Township 南温河乡 *Maguan County 马关县: Dulong Town 都龙镇 *Jiangcheng County 江城县: Qushui Township 曲水乡 (along the banks of the Tuka River 土卡河)

Phonology

Each syllable has at least one Syllable, onset, one Syllable, nucleus, and one Tone (linguistics), tone.Hudak, T. J. (2008). ''William J. Gedney’s comparative Tai source book''. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. The following sections present the consonants, vowels, and tones in Tai Dón.

Consonants

Initial consonants

The following table presents the above consonant phonemes in words reported in Hudak's (2008) book. There are four consonant clusters that occur at the beginning of a syllable.

Final consonants

Vowels

Tai Dón has nine short vowels, and one long vowel. However, the short vowels are phonetically realized as long in final position (e.g., /e/ is phonetically [eː] in final position).

Tones

There are six tones on a smooth syllable (an open syllable or a closed syllable ending in a sonorant). Two of the six tones occur on a checked syllable (a syllable ending in a plosive, stop).

Writing System

Consonants

Initials

Shown below are consonants of Tai Don with two tonal registers (high on the top and low on the bottom). Tai Don Consonants in Tai Viet

Finals

Shown below are final consonants of Tai Don with short vowel [a] on top and other vowels on the bottom. Tai Don Consonant Finals in Tai Viet

Onset

References

External links

Preliminary proposal to encode the Tai Khao script in UCS

A response to Kushim Jiang, “Preliminary proposal to encode the Tai Khao script in UCS”
* https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2022/22098-tai-don.pdf * https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2022/22099-tai-don-comment.pdf Languages of Vietnam Southwestern Tai languages {{tk-lang-stub