Geographic
distribution Indochina | Linguistic classification Austroasiatic
Pakanic | |
Glottolog mang1377 (partial match) | ||
The Pakanic languages, also known as Palyu and often including Mangic, are a tentative, recently identified branch of Austroasiatic languages. They are spoken in southern China and northern Vietnam.
Classification
Paul Sidwell's tentative classification is as follows.
In 1990, Paul K. Benedict had argued for the Mangic languages to be a separate Mon-Khmer branch. However, Gérard Diffloth later suggested an affinity with Palaungic. Nguyen Van Loi also classified Mangic within the Samtau group of Waic with Palaungic, although he later classified Mangic as a sister of Waic (Sidwell 2009:133). Peiros (2004) includes Mang within Pakanic. However, Paul Sidwell questions whether and how many of the languages will prove to be a new branch of Austroasiatic, since many languages classified as Mangic may in fact be Palaungic and Khmuic.
However, Li Yunbing (2005) separates these languages into a Pakanic branch and Mangic branch (Li 2005:307). According to Li (2005), Mangic is sometimes merged into Palaungic.