| Sedang | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Vietnam and Laos |
| Region | Kon Tum, Quảng Nam, Quảng Ngãi, Dak Lak(Vietnam) |
| Ethnicity | Sedang people |
Native speakers | 98,000 (2007) [1] |
Austroasiatic
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | sed |
| Glottolog | seda1262 |
 | |
Sedang is an Austro-Asiatic language spoken in eastern Laos and Kon Tum Province in south central Vietnam. The Sedang language has the most speakers of any of the languages of the North Bahnaric language group, a group of languages known for their range of vowel phonations.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Plosive | unaspirated | p | t | tɕ | k | ʔ |
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | tɕʰ | kʰ | ||
| prenasalized | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᶮdʑ | ᵑɡ | ||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | x | h | |
| voiced | v | z | ɣ | |||
| Approximant | w | l | j | |||
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |
| Upper Mid | e | o | |
| Lower Mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Low | a |
| Front Glide | Central Glide | Back Glide | |
|---|---|---|---|
| /i/ Nucleus | iɛ̯, ḭɛ̯ | iə̯, ḭə̯, ĩə̯̃, ḭ̃ə̯̃ | io̯, ĩõ̯ |
| /u/ Nucleus | uə̯, ṵə̯, ũə̯̃, ṵ̃ə̯̃ | uo̯, ṵo̯ | |
| /e/ Nucleus | eə̯, ḛə̯, ẽə̯̃, ḛ̃ə̯̃ | eo̯, ḛo̯, ḛ̃o̯ | |
| /o/ Nucleus | oɛ̯, o̰ɛ̯ | oə̯, o̰ə̯, õə̯̃ |
Sedang itself has 24 pure vowels: 7 vowel qualities, all of which may be plain ([a]), nasalized ([ã]), and creaky ([a̰]) and three of which /i a o/ may be both nasal and creaky ([ã̰]). While it does not have the length distinctions of other North Bahnaric languages, it has more diphthongs, between 33 and 55 vowel sounds all together. (The above set yields 50.) Sedang is thus sometimes claimed to have the largest vowel inventory in the world. However, other Bahnaric languages have more vowel qualities (Bahnar, for example, has 9) in addition to phonemic vowel length so the language with the record depends closely on how the languages are described and distinct vowels are defined.
The Austroasiatic languages are a large language family spoken throughout Mainland Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia. These languages are natively spoken by the majority of the population in Vietnam and Cambodia, and by minority populations scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China. Approximately 117 million people speak an Austroasiatic language, of which more than two-thirds are Vietnamese speakers. Of the Austroasiatic languages, only Vietnamese, Khmer, and Mon have lengthy, established presences in the historical record. Only two are presently considered to be the national languages of sovereign states: Vietnamese in Vietnam, and Khmer in Cambodia. The Mon language is a recognized indigenous language in Myanmar and Thailand, while the Wa language is a "recognized national language" in the de facto autonomous Wa State within Myanmar. Santali is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. The remainder of the family's languages are spoken by minority groups and have no official status.
Khmer is an Austroasiatic language spoken natively by the Khmer people. This language is an official language and national language of Cambodia. The language is also widely spoken by Khmer people in Eastern Thailand and Isan, Thailand, also in Southeast and Mekong Delta of Vietnam.
Vietnamese is an Austroasiatic language spoken primarily in Vietnam where it is the national and official language. Vietnamese is spoken natively by around 85 million people, several times as many as the rest of the Austroasiatic family combined. It is the native language of the Vietnamese (Kinh) people, as well as a second or first language for other ethnic groups in Vietnam, and still used by Vietnamese diaspora in the world.
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length). They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress.
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, for example in Arabic, Czech, Dravidian languages, some Finno-Ugric languages, Japanese, Kyrgyz, Samoan, and Xhosa. Some languages in the past likely had the distinction even though their descendants do not, with an example being Latin and its descendent Romance languages.
The phonology of Vietnamese features 19 consonant phonemes, with 5 additional consonant phonemes used in Vietnamese's Southern dialect, and 4 exclusive to the Northern dialect. Vietnamese also has 14 vowel nuclei, and 6 tones that are integral to the interpretation of the language. Older interpretations of Vietnamese tones differentiated between "sharp" and "heavy" entering and departing tones. This article is a technical description of the sound system of the Vietnamese language, including phonetics and phonology. Two main varieties of Vietnamese, Hanoi and Saigon, which are slightly different to each other, are described below.
The fifteen Katuic languages form a branch of the Austroasiatic languages spoken by about 1.3 million people in Southeast Asia. People who speak Katuic languages are called the Katuic peoples. Paul Sidwell is the leading specialist on the Katuic languages. He notes that Austroasiatic/Mon–Khmer languages are lexically more similar to Katuic and Bahnaric the closer they are geographically. He says this geographic similarity is independent of which branch of the family each language belongs to. He also says Katuic and Bahnaric do not have any shared innovations, so they do not form a single branch of the Austroasiatic family, but form separate branches.
The Bahnaric languages are a group of about thirty Austroasiatic languages spoken by about 700,000 people in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Paul Sidwell notes that Austroasiatic/Mon–Khmer languages are lexically more similar to Bahnaric and Katuic languages the closer they are geographically, independently of which branch of the family they belong to, but that Bahnaric and Katuic do not have any shared innovations that would suggest that together they form a branch of the Austroasiatic family, rather forming separate branches.
Jarai is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by the Jarai people of Vietnam and Cambodia. The speakers of Jarai number approximately 530,000, not including other possible Jarai communities in countries other than Vietnam and Cambodia such as United States of America. They are the largest of the upland ethnic groups of Vietnam's Central Highlands known as Degar or Montagnards, and 25 per cent of the population in the Cambodian province of Ratanakiri.
The Pacoh language is a member of the Katuic language group, a part of the Eastern Mon–Khmer linguistic branch. Most Pacoh speakers live in central Laos and central Vietnam. Pacoh is undergoing substantial change, influenced by the Vietnamese.
The Cua language is a Mon–Khmer language spoken in the Quảng Ngãi and Quảng Nam provinces of Vietnam. Cua dialects include Kol and Traw. Maier & Burton (1981) is currently the most extensive Cua dictionary to date.
Chrau is a Bahnaric language spoken by some of the 22,000 ethnic Cho Ro people in southern Vietnam. Unlike most languages of Southeast Asia, Chrau has no lexical tone, though it does have significant sentence intonation.
Proto-Austroasiatic is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austroasiatic languages. Proto-Mon–Khmer has been reconstructed in Harry L. Shorto's Mon–Khmer Comparative Dictionary, while a new Proto-Austroasiatic reconstruction is currently being undertaken by Paul Sidwell.
Brao is a Mon–Khmer language of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
Sa'och is an endangered, nearly extinct Pearic language of Cambodia and Thailand spoken only occasionally by a decreasing number of older adults. There are two dialects, one spoken in Veal Renh Village, Prey Nob District, Sihanoukville Province, Cambodia and the other in Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand. "Sa'och" is the Khmer exonym for the people and the language. The Sa'och, however, consider this label, which means "scarlet fever" or "pimply" in Khmer, pejorative and use the autonym "Chung" to refer to themselves and their language.
Stieng is the language of the Stieng people of southern Vietnam and adjacent areas of Cambodia, and possibly Laos. Along with Chrau and Mnong, Stieng is classified as a language of the South Bahnaric grouping of the Mon–Khmer languages within the Austroasiatic language family. In the Austroasiatic scheme, the Bahnaric languages are often cited as being most closely related to the Khmer language.
Kháng, also known as Mang U’, is an Austroasiatic language of Vietnam. It is closely related to the Bumang language of southern Yunnan, China.
Tampuan is the language of Tampuan people indigenous to the mountainous regions of Ratanakiri Province in Cambodia. As of the 2008 census there were 31,000 speakers, which amounts to 21% of the province's population. It is closely related to Bahnar and Alak, the three of which form the Central Bahnaric language grouping within the Mon-Khmer language family according to traditional classification. Sidwell's more recent classification groups Tampuan on an equal level with Bahnar and the South Bahnaric languages in a larger Central Bahnar group. The Tampuan language has no native writing. EMU International began linguistic research in 1995 and produced an alphabet using Khmer letters. The alphabet was further refined by linguists from International Cooperation for Cambodia (ICC) and the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport (MOEYS). The modified Khmer script was approved by MOEYS in 2003 for use in bilingual education programs for Tampuan implemented by ICC, UNESCO, and CARE.
Jru' is a Mon–Khmer language of the Bahnaric branch spoken in southern Laos. It is also known as "Loven", "Laven" or "Boloven" from the Laotian exonym Laven or Loven, which is derived from the Khmer name for the Boloven Plateau. The Jru' people engage in coffee and cardamom cultivation, as well as other agricultural activities.
Nguyễn Văn Lợi was a Vietnamese linguist who served as the deputy director of the Institute of Linguistics at the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences.
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