Khmu language
Encyclopedia
Khmu is the language of the Khmu people
of the northern Laos
region. It is also spoken in adjacent areas of Vietnam
, Thailand
and China
. Khmu lends its name to the Khmuic
branch of the Austro-Asiatic
language family, which also includes Khmer
and Vietnamese
. Within Austro-Asiatic, Khmu is often cited as being most closely related to the Palaungic
and Khasic
languages. The name "Khmu" can also be seen romanized
as Kmhmu, Khmu', Kammu, or Khamuk in various publications or alternatively referred to by the name of a local dialect.
, and the degree to which the language has been influenced by the surrounding national language
(s). Dialects are, for the most part, mutually intelligible; however communication can be difficult between speakers of geographically distant dialects.
The dialects of Khmu can be broadly categorized into two groups, Western Khmu and Eastern Khmu. Western Khmu dialects have fewer consonant phonemes and instead use phonemic register contrast, as seen in other Austro-Asiatic languages, of "lax" breathy
register and "tense" modal
register. In at least one dialect of Western Khmu, known as Khmu Rook, tonogenesis is evident as the register contrast has developed into a system of two phonetic tones with six phonemic realizations. Eastern Khmu dialects show the opposite tendency. Completely lacking either register or tone distinction, these dialects utilize a three-way distinction of stops
(voiced, voiceless and aspirated voiceless) and nasals (voiced, voiceless, and pre-glottalized) in the syllable-initial position for phonemic contrast.
s in the colored cells are particular to the dialects of Eastern Khmu. The phoneme /f/, present in dialects of both Eastern and Western Khmu, is a result of borrowings from the surrounding Tai languages
.
*w̥ is technically a voiceless labio-velar approximant
Khmu people
The Khmu is one of the largest ethnic groups based in northern Laos. They can also be found in Burma, southwest China , Thailand, and Vietnam, where they are an officially recognized ethnic group...
of the northern Laos
Laos
Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
region. It is also spoken in adjacent areas of Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
and China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
. Khmu lends its name to the Khmuic
Khmuic languages
Khmuic languages are a subgroup of the Mon–Khmer languages.*Khao: Khao, Bit *Mlabri: Mlabri, Yumbri*Xinh Mul: Khang, Phong-Kniang, Puoc...
branch of the Austro-Asiatic
Austro-Asiatic languages
The Austro-Asiatic languages, in recent classifications synonymous with Mon–Khmer, are a large language family of Southeast Asia, also scattered throughout India and Bangladesh. The name Austro-Asiatic comes from the Latin words for "south" and "Asia", hence "South Asia"...
language family, which also includes Khmer
Khmer language
Khmer , or Cambodian, is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. It is the second most widely spoken Austroasiatic language , with speakers in the tens of millions. Khmer has been considerably influenced by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious...
and Vietnamese
Vietnamese language
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
. Within Austro-Asiatic, Khmu is often cited as being most closely related to the Palaungic
Palaungic languages
The nearly thirty Palaungic or Palaung–Wa languages form a branch of the Austro-Asiatic languages.Most of the Palaungic languages lost the contrastive voicing of the ancestral Austro-Asiatic consonants, with the distinction often shifting to the following vowel...
and Khasic
Khasic languages
The Khasic or Khasian languages are a family of Austro-Asiatic languages. They consist of Khasi, Pnar, War, and Lyngngam.-External links:*...
languages. The name "Khmu" can also be seen romanized
Romanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
as Kmhmu, Khmu', Kammu, or Khamuk in various publications or alternatively referred to by the name of a local dialect.
Dialects
As a minority language with no standardizing influence, many dialects have evolved. Dialects differ primarily in consonant inventory, existence of registerRegister (phonology)
In linguistics, a register language, also known as a pitch-register language, is a language which combines tone and vowel phonation into a single phonological system. Burmese and the Chinese dialect Shanghainese are examples...
, and the degree to which the language has been influenced by the surrounding national language
National language
A national language is a language which has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a people and perhaps by extension the territory they occupy. The term is used variously. A national language may for instance represent the national identity of a nation or country...
(s). Dialects are, for the most part, mutually intelligible; however communication can be difficult between speakers of geographically distant dialects.
The dialects of Khmu can be broadly categorized into two groups, Western Khmu and Eastern Khmu. Western Khmu dialects have fewer consonant phonemes and instead use phonemic register contrast, as seen in other Austro-Asiatic languages, of "lax" breathy
Breathy voice
Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal cords vibrate, as they do in normal voicing, but are held further apart, so that a larger volume of air escapes between them. This produces an audible noise...
register and "tense" modal
Modal voice
Modal voice is the vocal register used most frequently in speech and singing in most languages. It is also the term used in linguistics for the most common phonation of vowels...
register. In at least one dialect of Western Khmu, known as Khmu Rook, tonogenesis is evident as the register contrast has developed into a system of two phonetic tones with six phonemic realizations. Eastern Khmu dialects show the opposite tendency. Completely lacking either register or tone distinction, these dialects utilize a three-way distinction of stops
Stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
(voiced, voiceless and aspirated voiceless) and nasals (voiced, voiceless, and pre-glottalized) in the syllable-initial position for phonemic contrast.
Consonants
The consonant inventory of Khmu is shown in the table below. The phonemePhoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s in the colored cells are particular to the dialects of Eastern Khmu. The phoneme /f/, present in dialects of both Eastern and Western Khmu, is a result of borrowings from the surrounding Tai languages
Tai languages
The Tai or Zhuang–Tai languages are a branch of the Tai–Kadai language family. The Tai languages include the most widely spoken of the Tai–Kadai languages, including standard Thai or Siamese, the national language of Thailand; Lao or Laotian, the national language of Laos; Burma's Shan language;...
.
| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Labio- dental Labiodental consonant In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | Aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | cʰ | kʰ | ʔ | ||||||
| Voiceless | p | t | c | k | ||||||||
| Voiced | b | d | ɟ | g | ||||||||
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
Voiceless | m̥ | n̥ | ɲ̥ | ŋ̥ | |||||||
| Voiced | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||||||
| Preglottalized | ʔm | ʔn | ʔɲ | ʔŋ | ||||||||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
Voiceless | (f) | s | h | ||||||||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
Voiceless | w̥* | l̥ | r̥ | j̊ | |||||||
| Voiced | w | l | r | j | ||||||||
| Preglottalized | ʔw | ʔj | ||||||||||
*w̥ is technically a voiceless labio-velar approximant
Vowels
The vowels of Khmu show little variation across the dialects with all varieties having 19 monophthongs and three diphthongs (/iə/, /ɨə/ and /uə/).| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
/i/ | /iː/ | /ɨ/ | /ɨː/ | /u/ | /uː/ |
| Close-mid Close-mid vowel A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel... |
/e/ | /eː/ | /ə/ | /əː/ | /o/ | /oː/ |
| Open-mid Open-mid vowel An open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel... |
/ɛ/ | /ɛː/ | /ʌː/ | /ɔ/ | /ɔː/ | |
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
/a/ | /aː/ |
Further reading
- Prēmsīrat, Suwilai. The Thesaurus and Dictionary Series of Khmu Dialects in Southeast Asia. Nakorn Pathom: Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University at Salaya, Thailand, 2002. ISBN 740501125
- Prēmsīrat, Suwilai. Khmu, a Minority Language of Thailand. Papers in South-East Asian linguistics, no. 10. Canberra, A.C.T., Australia: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1987. ISBN 0858833654
- Proschan, Frank. Kmhmu Language and Language Policy: At Home and Abroad. [S.l: s.n, 1995.
- Proschan, Frank. Poetic Parallelism in Kmhmu Verbal Arts: From Texts to Performances. [S.l: s.n, 1988.
- Smalley, William Allen. Outline of Khmu structure. American Oriental series. Essay, v.2. New Haven, Conn: American Oriental Society, 1961.
- Svantesson, Jan-Olof. Kammu Phonology and Morphology. Travaux de l'Institut de linguistique de Lund, 18. Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1983. ISBN 9140048705
External links
- Khmu: A language of Laos from Ethnologue: Languages of the World