Buyang language
language
Buyang (Chinese: 布央语) is a Kra language spoken in Guangnan and Funing counties, Yunnan Province, China by the Buyang people. It is important to the reconstruction of the hypothetical macrofamily Austro-Tai as it retains the disyllabic roots characteristic of Austronesian languages. Examples are /matɛ́/ "to die", /matá/ "eye", /qaðù/ "head", and /maðû/ "eight". (See Austro-Tai for proposed connections.)
The Buyang language was initially documented in 1990 by Chinese linguist Liang Min. In 1999, a doctoral dissertation and book was published for Buyang. The book has also recently been translated into English.
Many speakers of Buyang are also fluent in Zhuang.
Subdivisions
The Buyang (布央) dialect cluster is spoken by a total of around 2,000 people living mostly in the Gula (谷拉) River valley of southeastern Yunnan Province. It is spoken in at least eight villages in Gula Township 谷拉乡, Funing County 富宁县, Wenshan Zhuang–Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan. Buyang is divided into the following groups:
Langjia 郎架 is spoken in Langjia 郎架, Funing County 富宁县, Yunnan along the Guangxi border.
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This entry incorporates text from “Buyang language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.