Native to Yunnan, China Native speakers 1.3 million (2003) | Ethnicity Bai | |
Language family Sino-Tibetan
Sinitic ?
Macro-Bai ?
Bai Dialects Jianchuan-Dali
Panyi–Lama
? Laemae ISO 639-3 Variously:
bca – Central Bai, Jianchuan dialect
bfs – Southern Bai, Dali dialect
bfc – Northern Bai, Bijiang dialect (Panyi Bai)
lay – Lama Bai? | ||
The Bai language (Bai: Baip‧ngvp‧zix; simplified Chinese: 白语; traditional Chinese: 白語; pinyin: Báiyǔ) is a language spoken in China, primarily in Yunnan province, by the Bai people. The language has over a million speakers and is divided into three main dialects. It is a tonal language with eight tones and a rather rich set of vowels. As is common among Southeast Asian languages, the vowels of Bai have a phonemic opposition between tense vowels and lax vowels (creaky voice vs. normal voice). There exists a small amount of traditional literature written with Chinese characters, Bowen (僰文), as well as a number of recent publications printed with a recently standardized system of romanisation using the Latin alphabet.
Contents
Varieties
Within the core Bai area, three dialects are recognized, which may actually be distinct languages: Jianchuan (Central), Dali (Southern), and Bijiang (Northern). Jianchuan and Dali are close, and speakers are reported to be able to understand one another after living together for a month. Bijiang is more divergent, and may itself be two languages, Panyi and Lama, the latter mixed with Nung.
The Laemae (lɛ˨˩mɛ˨˩, Leimai, Leimo), a clan numbering about 50,000 people who are submerged within the Lisu, are reported to speak a "Bai group language" (Bradley 2007:363). Bradley (2007) estimates that there are about 15,000 speakers of Laemae in Fugong County, Yunnan. Lisu and Northern Bai are also spoken in the region.
Wang Feng (2012) gives the following tree for 9 Bai dialects (datapoints). The Lama (拉玛) are in Tuoluo, Gongxing, and Enqi; the Lemo (勒墨) are in Ega and Jinman.
Wang (2012) also documents a Bai dialect in Xicun, Dacun Village, Shalang Township, Kunming City (昆明市沙朗乡大村西村).
Classification
The position of this language (or language group) within the Sino-Tibetan family is undetermined. Traditionally, Bai has been considered to be a Tibeto-Burman language, but starting with R.A.D. Forrest in 1948, the rival argument has been made that it is instead an offshoot of Proto-Sinitic, coordinate with Old Chinese. Within the last generation, this argument has been taken up by Sergei Starostin, G. van Driem, and S. Zhengzhang. The state of the debate on the genetic position of Bai is surveyed by Wang (2005), who points out that the proper investigation of the issue is hampered by the fact that Proto-Bai, the ancestor of the three modern dialects, has yet to be reconstructed. Indeed, the dialects themselves have not yet all been thoroughly described.
The question is complicated by the fact that Bai vocabulary has been influenced over millennia by both neighboring Tibeto-Burman languages and several varieties of Chinese. The Sinologist Jerry Norman has stated: "While it would probably be going too far to consider Bái a Sinitic [Chinese] dialect, its close links to Sinitic cannot easily be dismissed."
Grammar
Bai has a basic syntactic order of subject–verb–object (SVO). However, SOV word order can be found in interrogative and negative sentences.