Maonan language
Maonan language
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Maonan language

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Maonan language

The Maonan language (Chinese: 毛南语; pinyin: Máonán yǔ) is a Kam–Sui language spoken mainly in China by the Maonan people, specifically in northern Guangxi and southern Guizhou. Huanjiang Maonan Autonomous County, Hechi, northern Guangxi, holds a concentrated number of speakers.

Approximately half of all Maonan people are capable of speaking Maonan. In addition to this, many Maonan also speak Chinese or a Zhuang language. About 1/3 of all people who self-identify as Maonan are concentrated in the southern Guizhou province. They speak a mutually unintelligible dialect commonly called Yanghuang, which is more commonly known as the Then language in Western literature. The Maonan do not have a writing system.

Other than Huanjiang Maonan Autonomous County in Guangxi, Maonan is also spoken in the following locations.

Maonan is a tonal language with 8 tones (Lu 2008:90–91), featuring an SVO clause construction (Lu 2008:169). (See Proto-Tai language#Tones for an explanation of the tone numbers.) For example:

man2

3SG

na4

eat

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