Palaung language

Palaung or Ta'ang (Burmese: ပလောင်ဘာသာ), also known as De'ang (Chinese:德昂語; Burmese: တအာင်းဘာသာ), is an Austroasiaticdialect cluster spoken by over half a million people in Burma (Shan State) and neighboring countries. The Palaung people are divided into Palé (Ruching), Rumai, and Shwe, and each of whom have their own language.^[2][3] The Riang languages are reported to be unintelligible or only understood with great difficulty by native speakers of the other Palaung languages.

A total number of speakers is uncertain; there were 150,000 Shwe speakers in 1982, 272,000 Ruching (Palé) speakers in 2000, and 139,000 Rumai speakers at an unrecorded date.^[1] Palaung was classified as a "severely endangered" language in UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.^[4][5] The Rulai dialect spoken near Lashio has regular phonological changes and some lexical differences from Ruching.^[6]

Chen, et al. (1986) enumera las siguientes consonantes para Palaung:

Una /r/ final se puede escuchar como un sonido sordo [ɹ̥], y después de una /u/ se escucha como [ɫ̥].

/ɤ/ can be heard in rapid speech as a central vowel [ə], and is heard as [ɤ] elsewhere. /a/ can be heard as fronted [æ] before /k, ŋ/, and [ɛ] before /n, t/.

According to Shorto (1960), /ɤ/ does not occur alone in primary stressed syllable, but only in an unstressed syllable or as the second member of a diphthong. There are also a large number of diphthongs, including /eo/, /eɤ/, /aɤ/, /ɔɤ/, /oɤ/, /uɤ/, and /iɤ/.

Although Milne (1921) includes the vowels /ü, ö, ɪ/ in her transcriptions, Shorto (1960) did not find these as vowel phonemes in his work.

(Note that the words cited below in the Syntax section come from Milne (1921), so their phonetic representations may need revision.)

During British rule in Burma, Palaung speakers used the Shan script to write their languages.^[15] An American Christian missionary introduced a new script for Palaung in 1912, but the script failed to gain traction.^[15]

In 1955, Paw San devised a new script for the language, and was awarded a gold medal by the local chieftain, Khun Pan Cing, for his efforts.^[15] However, the script did not displace other writing systems used for Palaung, especially due to the dominance of Shan authorities.^[15] From 1967 to 1968, the Shan Council held a session in Taunggyi to devise a new script and settled on a Burmese-based script to make Pali texts more accessible to Palaung speakers.^[15]

Una forma estandarizada de esta escritura fue adoptada en 1972 y actualmente se utiliza en la educación no formal en el estado de Shan y Mandalay. ^{[ 15 ] [ 16 ]} Basada en el alfabeto birmano , conserva todas las consonantes birmanas e introduce algunas nuevas combinaciones de vocales, una consonante adicional (ႎ /v/) y un conjunto completo de marcadores de tono influenciados por la lengua shan . ^{[ 16 ]} Esto permite que las palabras pali se escriban utilizando su forma original, aunque solo se representan comúnmente los sonidos específicos de Palaung. ^{[ 16 ]} A diferencia de las escrituras para Mon o birmano, la escritura Palaung no refleja una etapa anterior de la lengua. ^{[ 16 ]} Comparte algunas características con la escritura shan. ^{[ 16 ]} La escritura se utiliza especialmente para las variedades Palaung del norte de Shwe y Rumai, aunque la tasa de alfabetización es generalmente baja debido a la presencia de lenguas de mayor prestigio como Shan y birmano en la región. ^{[ 16 ]} Recientemente, grupos comunitarios en el estado de Shan y Mandalay han emprendido esfuerzos para estandarizar la ortografía Palaung. ^{[ 16 ]}

La variedad meridional de Palaung, Ruching, también se escribe utilizando la escritura Tai Tham , aunque la alfabetización es baja, y ahora compite con la escritura derivada del birmano. ^{[ 16 ]}

Weymuth (2018) documentó una breve morfología verbal del rumai, una variedad del palaung. Los verbos en rumai palaung se flexionan según el tiempo, el aspecto y el modo.

La siguiente parte de una historia en shwe palaung es de Milne (1921:146–147).

• Sitio web en idioma Palaung de Tailandia
• Sitio web del idioma Palaung Ruch