Yangchun Pai Yao is an extinct
Mienic
The Mienic or Yao languages are spoken by the Yao people of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.
Some of the Yao peoples speak Hmongic languages (Miao); these are called '' Bunu''. A small population of Yao people in Jinxiu Yao Autonomous County ...
language of
Yangchun
Yangchun, alternately romanized as Yeungchun, (local pronunciation: ">ɛŋ31 ʦʰɐn45/nowiki>) is a county-level city in southwestern Guangdong, China, administered as a part of the prefecture-level city of Yangjiang. Yangchun has an area ...
,
Guangdong
) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...
,
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
. It is unclassified within Mienic, and is likely a sister branch to
Dzao Min
Dzao Min (, Zao Min) is a Hmong–Mien language of China. Mao (2004:306) reports a total of more than 60,000 speakers in Liannan County and Yangshan County of Guangdong, and in Yizhang County of Hunan. The speakers from Bapai, Guangdong are als ...
.
Documentation
The 1996 ''Yangchun County Gazetteer'' (阳春县志) has just over a dozen Yangchun Pai Yao words that were transcribed in Chinese characters. According to the gazetteer, there were 13 semi-speakers remaining in the 1990s.
[Yangchun City Geographical History Office ��春市地方史志办公室 1996. ''Yangchun County Gazetteer'' ��春县志 Guangzhou: Guangdong People's Publishing House ��东人民出版社] Hsiu (2023) reported that the language was extinct in 2019, with only one elderly rememberer able to provide a few dozen words.
References
Mienic languages
Languages of Guangdong
Extinct languages of Asia
{{HmongMien-lang-stub