The Hlai languages () are a primary branch of the Kra–Dai language family spoken in the mountains of central and south-central Hainan in China by the Hlai people, not to be confused with the colloquial name for the Leizhou branch of Min Chinese (). They include Cun, whose speakers are ethnically distinct.Ethnologue mistakenly lists Cun among the Kra languages. A quarter of Hlai speakers are monolingual. None of the Hlai languages had a writing system until the 1950s, when the Latin script was adopted for Ha.
Classification Norquest (2007) classifies the Hlai languages as follows. There are some 750,000 Hlai speakers.
Proto-Hlai Bouhin ( ) – 73,000 Greater Hlai Ha Em 哈炎 ( ) – 193,000 Central Hlai East Central Hlai – 344,000 Lauhut ( ) – 166,000, the basis of the literary language Qi 杞 (also known as Gei) – 178,000 Tongzha ( ) – 125,000 Zandui ( ) – 29,000 – 24,000 North Central Hlai – 136,500 Northwest Central Hlai – 62,500 Cun 村语 (Ngan Fon, ) – 60,000 ( ) – 2,500 Northeast Central Hlai – 74,000 (Moifau) – 30,000
Moyfaw ( ) (Zwn; also known as ) – 44,000 – 36,000 – 8,000
Nadou is spoken by approximately 4,000 people in the two villages of (in Town ) and (in Town ), in Dongfang, Hainan. Speakers refer to themselves as and are officially classified by the Chinese government as ethnic Han Chinese.
(52,000 speakers) is a divergent Kra-Dai language with a Hlai superstratum and a non-Hlai substratum.
Reconstruction
The Proto-Hlai language is the reconstructed ancestor of the Hlai languages. Proto-Hlai reconstructions include those of Matisoff (1988), Thurgood (1991), Ostapirat (2004), and Norquest (2007).
Phonology The following displays the phonological features of the modern Hlai dialects:
Consonants BilabialLabio-dentalAlveolarAlveolo-palatalVelarGlottalplainlab.plainlab.pal.PlosivevoicelessaspiratedvoicedimplosiveAffricatevoicelessaspiratedFricativevoicelessvoicedlateralNasal()TrillApproximant
, mainly occur word-initially among various dialects. may also be realized as . [], [] mainly occur among the Xifang dialects. can also occur as an allophone of . , , are pronounced as alveolo-palatal sounds , , , among other various dialects. can have allophones as . For a brief period of time Yuanmen distinguished and after became which soon merged with .Norquest (2007), p. 106
Vowels FrontCentralBackHighMidLow
Among other Hlai dialects, can have allophones of . Vowel sounds and are common among the Baisha and Jiamao dialects. occurs among some dialects.
History Liang & Zhang (1996:18–21) conclude that the original homeland of the Hlai languages was the Leizhou Peninsula, and estimate that the Hlai had migrated across the Hainan Strait to Hainan Island about 4,000 years before present.
According to Ostapirat (2026), Hlai originated much further to the southwest from north-central Vietnam. The ancestors of present-day Hlai speakers migrated directly to southern Hainan but not northern Hainan, since they followed a migration route that skipped the Leizhou Peninsula.
See also Proto-Hlai reconstructions (Wiktionary) Has Hlai grammar Hlai people Proto-Hlai language
Notes
References
Further reading Miyake, Marc. 2013. The other Kra-Dai numerals (Parts 1, 2). Miyake, Marc. 2011. Is Jiamao Hlai? Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hlai -ɯ. Miyake, Marc. 2008. Implosives on Hainan (Parts 1, 2). Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hlai initial verification. Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hlai initial glides. Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hlai palatal codas. 中国科学院少数民族语言调查第一工作队海南分队编. 1957. Guanyu huafen Liyu fangyan he chuangzuo Liwen de yijian 关于划分黎语方言和创作黎文的意见. 黎族语言文字问题科学讨论会. Norquest, Peter K. 2015. A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Hlai. Languages of Asia, Volume 13. Leiden: Brill.
External links
Bible recordings in various Hlai languages ABVD: Proto-Hlai word list Hlai-language Swadesh vocabulary list of basic words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix) Hlai languages learning website (both in Mandarin Chinese and English)