Zhuang language

The Zhuang language (autonym: Cueŋь/Cuengh; Chinese: 壮语; pinyin: Zhuàngyǔ) is used by the Zhuang people in the People's Republic of China. Most of them live in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Zhuang, which belongs to the Tai language group, is an official language in that region. Language use is however rapidly declining as the Zhuang assimilate to the Han Chinese.

Standardized Zhuang is based on the dialect of Wuming County (武鸣县).

Bouyei, considered a separate language in China, is actually just a slightly different standard form of Zhuang, used across the province border in Guizhou. There is a dialect continuum between Zhuang and Bouyei.

Zhuang is a tonal language. It has six tones in open syllables:

numbercontourdescription
124rising
231low falling
355high level
442falling
535high rising
633mid level

It has two (high and low) in closed syllables.

Writing systems

Zhuang had been written with ideographs that were borrowed from Han characters adopted to this language, and original characters made out by using the similar manner of construction, for more than a thousand years, similar to Vietnamese Chu Nom. In 1957, in the People's Republic of China a Latin alphabet with some special letters was introduced to write the new standardised Zhuang language. A spelling reform in 1986 replaced these special letters with regular letters of the Latin alphabet to facilitate printing and the use of computers. The table below compares spelling before and after the 1986 reform.

consonants
1957198619571986195719861957198619571986
B bB bƂ ƃMb mbM mM mF fF fVV
D dD dƋƌNd ndN nN nS sS sL lL l
G gG gGv gvGv gvŊ ŋNg ngH hH hR rR r
C cC cY yY yNv nyNy nyŊv ŋvNgv ngv
By byBy byGy gyGy gyMy myMy my
vowels
195719861957198619571986
A aA aE eE eƏ əAE ae
I iI iO oO oƜ ɯW w
tones
19571986
1not indicated
2Ƨ ƨZ z
3З зJ j
4Ч чX x
5Ƽ ƽQ q
6Ƅ ƅH h

See also

Template:Interwiki

de:Zhuang (Sprache) es:Idioma chuan fr:Zhuang ja:チワン語 zh-cn:壮语

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