Region Hainan ISO 639-3 onb | Native speakers 600,000 (2000) Glottolog ling1262 | |
Native to People's Republic of China Language family Tai–Kadai
Southern
Be–Tai
Ong Be | ||
Ong Be ([ʔɑŋ˧ɓe˧]), also known as Bê, or Vo Limgao (臨高, Lingao) in Chinese, is a language spoken by 600,000 people, 100,000 of them monolingual, on the north-central coast of Hainan Island, including the suburbs of the provincial capital Haikou. The language is taught in primary schools and broadcast on the radio. Ong Be is a Tai–Kadai language, but it has no close relatives and its relationship within that family has not been determined.
Dialects
Ong Be consists of the Lincheng 临城 (Western) and Qiongshan 琼山 (Eastern) dialects (Lingaoyu Yanjiu).
References
Ong Be language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA