Youjiang Zhuang, named after the
Youjiang River in
Guangxi,
China, 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'' distingu ...
or
Zhuang Language spoken in
Tiandong County,
Tianyang District, and parts of the
Youjiang District in
Baise
Baise (; local pronunciation: ), or Bose, is the westernmost prefecture-level city of Guangxi, China bordering Vietnam as well as the provinces of Guizhou and Yunnan. The city has a population of 4.3 million, of which 1.4 million live in the ur ...
,
Guangxi.
History and classification
Native speakers refer to the language as , which means "local language".
André-Georges Haudricourt in 1956 included the language of Tianzhou, the county seat of Tianyang, under Dioi, his name for Northern Zhuang.
Based on data from the 1950s Guangxi Zhuang language survey, Tiandong, Tianyang and a suburb of Baise City were grouped together. This grouping was sometimes called ''Tianyangese'' (). In the 1999 ''A Study of Zhuang Dialects'' this group was referred to as the Youjiang language (), and in 2007 Youjiang Zhuang was added as a separate language to ''Ethnologue''.
Phonology
Youjiang Zhuang has 10 tones, and can be considered as having 20 initials and 83 finals, though some speakers pronounce the initials and as and respectively.
Writing System
Youjiang Zhuang has two main writing systems,
characters
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
and romanization.
References
Tai languages
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