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Zhuang language |
| Zhuang Sawcuengh |
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|---|---|---|
| Pronunciation: | [saɯ̯˨˦ ʃue̯ŋ˧] | |
| Spoken in: | China | |
| Total speakers: | 14 million | |
| Language family: | Tai-Kadai Tai Central Zhuang |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | za | |
| ISO 639-2: | zha | |
| ISO 639-3: | variously: zha – Zhuang (generic) zgn – Guibian Zhuang zlj – Liujiang Zhuang zqe – Qiubei Zhuang zgb – Guibei Zhuang zyj – Youjiang Zhuang zch – Central Hongshuihe Zhuang zeh – Eastern Hongshuihe Zhuang zlq – Liuqian Zhuang zyb – Yongbei Zhuang zln – Lianshan Zhuang zhn – Yanguang Zhuang zyg – Dejing Zhuang zgm – Minz Zhuang zyn – Yongnan Zhuang zzj – Zuojiang Zhuang zhd – Wenma Zhuang |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Zhuang language (autonym: Sawcuengh("Saw" means language and "Cuengh" means Zhuang) or Cueŋь; Chinese: 壮语; pinyin: Zhuàngyǔ) is used by the Zhuang people in the People's Republic of China. Most speakers live in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Zhuang, which belongs to the Tai language group, is an official language in that region.
Standardized Zhuang is based on the dialect of Wuming County (武鸣县). Buyei, 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 Buyei.
Zhuang is a tonal language. It has six tones in open syllables:
| Number | Contour | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ˨˦ | rising |
| 2 | ˧˩ | low falling |
| 3 | ˥ | high level |
| 4 | ˦˨ | falling |
| 5 | ˧˥ | high rising |
| 6 | ˧ | mid level |
It has two (high and low) in closed syllables.
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Zhuang has been written with logographs called sawndip, some are borrowed directly from Han characters adopted to this language, and some original characters made up by using the similar manner of construction, for more than a thousand years, rather like Vietnamese Chữ nôm. Sawndip are used for writing songs about every aspect of life, including in more recent times encouraging people to follow official family planning policy.
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.1
The tables below compare spelling before and after the 1986 reform.
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