Tai Nüa

Tai Nüa
Spoken in	People's Republic of China , Myanmar , Vietnam , Laos
speaker	715,000
Linguistic ; classification	Tai-Kadai Kam-Tai (Zhuang-Dong) Tai languages Tai Nüa ;
Official status
Official language in	Dehong Autonomous District ( Yunnan , PR China)
Language codes
ISO 639 -1	-
ISO 639 -2	tai
ISO 639-3	tdd

Sutra (Buddhist discourse) in Tai Nüa handwriting

Tai Nüa (also Dehong -Tai or -Dai; own name: ᥖᥭᥰᥖᥬᥳᥑᥨᥒᥰ [ taj taɯxoŋ ]; Chinese 傣那语 , Pinyin Dǎinàyǔ or 德宏傣语 , Déhóngdǎiyǔ ) is a name for several dialects from the family of the Tai Kadai languages . Within this they belong to the southwest branch of the Tai languages . In the People's Republic of China , where most of the speakers live, Tai Nüa has a status as one of the four languages of the officially recognized national minority of the Dai .

The majority of the Tai Nüa live in the Dehong Autonomous District in southern China's Yunnan Province . The number of speakers in China was estimated at 540,000 in 2001.

The language area of Tai Nüa roughly coincides with the historical Tai confederation Müang Mao, the capital of which was today's Ruili . This experienced the height of its power in the 14th century before it came under Chinese rule in 1449. Today's Dehong Autonomous District corresponds to the northeastern part of Müang Mao, the southwestern part is in today's Shan State of Myanmar. There were 72,400 Tai Nüa speakers there at the 1983 census.

Tai Nüa is linguistically, in terms of script and literary tradition, connected to the language of the Shan and the smaller Tai peoples in the Indian state of Assam . It is therefore also called "Chinese Shan".

Tai Ya is closely related to Dehong-Tai and has around 50,000 speakers in the prefecture-level city of Yuxi (particularly in Xinping Autonomous County ).

designation

There are often many different names for the "smaller" languages of Southeast Asia; this also applies to Tai Nüa. The assignment of different speaker groups is also controversial.

In the People's Republic of China, the names Dǎinàyǔ傣那语 and Déhóng Dǎiyǔ德宏傣语 are used in addition to their own name .

Ethnologue.org lists the following names and orthographic variants for Tai Nüa: Dai Nuea, Tai Neua, Tai Nue, Tai Nü, Dai Na, Dehong Dai, Dehong, Tai Dehong, Tai Le, Tai-Le, Dai Kong, Tai-Kong , Tai Mao, Chinese Shan, Chinese Tai, Yunannese Shan and Yunnan Shant'ou.

The linguist Harald Haarmann gives the following name variants: Chinese Shan, Tai Dehong, Tai Le, Tai Mao, Tai Neua, Tai Nü.

A distinction from the Tai Nüa of Dehong is Tai Neua as a dialect of the Tai people in the area of Sam Neua in the Lao province of Houaphan and neighboring areas of Vietnam. Both languages are translated as “northern Tai”, but each related to a different reference point.

font

Tai Nüa has its own script with 19 consonant characters, 11 characters for vowels and diphthongs, five tone characters and own number characters. The alphabet is similar to that of the Ahom in the Indian state of Assam .

The Unicode range of the Tai Nüa script (Tai Le) is U + 1950 to U + 197F.

literature

Sai Kam Mong: The History and Development of the Shan Scripts. Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai 2004.
Yaowen Zhou, Fenghe Fang: The Use and Development of Dai and Its Vernacular Writing Systems. In: Language Policy in the People's Republic of China. Theory and Practice Since 1949. Kluwer, Norwell MA / Dordrecht 2004, pp. 201-218.

Web links

Tai Dehong
Dehong Dai / Tai Le script (Omniglot)
Tai Le Unicode range. Unicode.org (PDF; 65 kB)
Test for Unicode support in Web browsers - Tai Le

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Tai Nüa . In: Ethnologue. Languages of the World. 17th edition. 2014.
↑ Zhou Yaowen, Luo Meizhen: 傣语方言硏究: 语音, 词汇, 文字 [Dǎi yǔ fāngyán yán jiū: Yǔyīn, cíhuì, wénzì; Studies on the dialects of the Dai. Pronunciation, Vocabulary, Scriptures ]. 民族出版社 [Mínzú chūbǎn shè; Nationalities Publishing House], Beijing 2001.
↑ Volker Grabowsky : The communities of the Tai in Yunnan and their tribute relations to China. In: Han times. Festschrift for Hans Stumpfeldt on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2006, pp. 576-577.
↑ Grabowsky: The communities of the Tai in Yunnan. 2006, p. 577.
↑ Tai Ya . In: Ethnologue . Languages of the World. 17th edition. 2014.
↑ Harald Haarmann: Elementary word order in the languages of the world. Documentation and analysis of the development of word order patterns. Helmut Buske Verlag, Hamburg 2004, pp. 147, 149.
^ Joachim Schliesinger: Ethnic Groups of Laos. Volume 1, White Lotus, Bangkok 2003, p. 37.
↑ Yos Santasombat: Lak Chang. A Reconstruction of Tai Identity in Daikong. Pandanus Books, Canberra 2001, p. 2.

[ethnologue-1] Tai Nüa . In: Ethnologue. Languages of the World. 17th edition. 2014.

[2] Zhou Yaowen, Luo Meizhen: 傣语方言硏究: 语音, 词汇, 文字 [Dǎi yǔ fāngyán yán jiū: Yǔyīn, cíhuì, wénzì; Studies on the dialects of the Dai. Pronunciation, Vocabulary, Scriptures ]. 民族出版社 [Mínzú chūbǎn shè; Nationalities Publishing House], Beijing 2001.

[3] Volker Grabowsky : The communities of the Tai in Yunnan and their tribute relations to China. In: Han times. Festschrift for Hans Stumpfeldt on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2006, pp. 576-577.

[4] Grabowsky: The communities of the Tai in Yunnan. 2006, p. 577.

[5] Tai Ya . In: Ethnologue . Languages of the World. 17th edition. 2014.

[6] Harald Haarmann: Elementary word order in the languages of the world. Documentation and analysis of the development of word order patterns. Helmut Buske Verlag, Hamburg 2004, pp. 147, 149.

[7] Joachim Schliesinger: Ethnic Groups of Laos. Volume 1, White Lotus, Bangkok 2003, p. 37.

[Yos_2-8] Yos Santasombat: Lak Chang. A Reconstruction of Tai Identity in Daikong. Pandanus Books, Canberra 2001, p. 2.