Maonan language
| Maonan | |
|---|---|
| Native to | China |
| Region | Huanjiang County, Hechi, northern Guangxi |
| Ethnicity | 107,000 (2000)[1] |
Native speakers | 30,000 (2005)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | mmd |
| Glottolog | maon1241 |
| ELP | Maonan |
The Maonan language is a Kam–Sui language spoken mainly in Huanjiang Maonan Autonomous County, Hechi, northern Guangxi by the Maonan people.[2]
Demographics
Approximately half of all Maonan people are capable of speaking Maonan. In addition to this, many Maonan also speak Chinese or a Zhuang language. About 1/3 of all people who self-identify as Maonan are concentrated in the southern Guizhou province. They speak a mutually unintelligible dialect commonly called Yanghuang, which is more common known as the Then language in Western literature. The Maonan do not have a writing system.
Other than Huanjiang Maonan Autonomous County in Guangxi, Maonan is also spoken in the following locations.[3]
- Nandan County, Guangxi
- Du'an Yao Autonomous County, Guangxi
- Yizhou, Guangxi
- Libo County, Guizhou
- Pingtang County, Guizhou
Phonology
Maonan is a tonal language with 8 tones (Lu 2008:90–91), featuring an SVO clause construction (Lu 2008:169). For example, man (he/she) shoot (drink) ka:u (wine) "He/She drinks wine", man (he/she) ba:i (go) hə (market) "He/She goes to the market", etc.
Syntax
Maonan displays a head-first modification structure, i.e. the modifier occurring after the modifier (Lu 2008:170). For example, ka:u (wine) hulia:ng (broomcorn) "broomcorn wine", mu (pig) la:u (big) "big pig", nok (bird) vin (fly) "flying bird", among others. Occasionally, a head-final modification structure is also possible with the involvement of a possessive particle (P.P.) di, e.g. ya:n (house/family) nda:u (we/our) di (P.P.) bo (buffalo) "Our family's buffalo" (cf. the more common bo ya:n nda:u) (ibid. pp173–174).
See also
References
- ^ a b Maonan at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Lu, Tian Qiao (2008). A Grammar of Maonan. Boca Raton, Florida: Universal Publishers. ISBN 978-1-59942-971-7.
- ^ Guangxi Minority Languages Orthography Committee. 2008. Vocabularies of Guangxi ethnic languages [广西民族语言方音词汇]. Beijing: Nationalities Publishing House [民族出版社].