Jiamao language
| Jiamao | |
|---|---|
| Kamau | |
| Native to | People's Republic of China |
| Region | Hainan |
Native speakers | (52,000 cited 1987)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | jio |
| Glottolog | jiam1236 |
Jiamao (加茂, or Kamau) is a divergent Hlai language spoken in southern Hainan, China.
Classification
Jiamao has many divergent words, and this lexical aberrancy is still a matter of debate. Graham Thurgood (1992) suggests that it might have an Austroasiatic substratum. Norquest (2007) identifies various lexical items in Jiamao that do not reconstruct to Proto-Hlai.
Demographics
In the 1980s, Jiamao was spoken by 50,000 people in central and south-central Hainan Island, mostly in Jiamao Township (加茂镇), Baoting County (保亭县). It shares less than half of its lexicon with standard Hlai.[2]
There are four Jiamao dialects.[3][4]
References
- ^ Jiamao at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Norquest, Peter K. 2007. A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Hlai. Ph.D. Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona.
- ^ http://lizu.baike.com/article-1004623.html
- ^ http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_49d8b2980100c9nf.html
- Norquest, Peter K. 2007. A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Hlai. Ph.D. dissertation. Tucson: Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona.
- Thurgood, Graham. 1992. The aberrancy of the Jiamao dialect of Hlai: speculation on its origins and history. In Ratliff, Martha S. and Schiller, E. (eds.), Papers from the First Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 417-433. Arizona State University, Program for Southeast Asian Studies.