Palaung language

Not to be confused with Palauan language.
Palaung
De'ang, Ta'ang
ပလောင်ဘာသာ, တအာင်းဘာသာ
Native toBurma, China, Thailand
EthnicityTa'ang
Native speakers
(ca. 560,000 cited 1982–??)[1]
Burmese, Tai Le
Language codes
ISO 639-3Variously:
pll – Shwe
pce – Ruching
rbb – Rumai
Glottologpala1336
De'ang manuscript

Palaung or Ta'ang (Burmese: ပလောင်ဘာသာ), also known as De'ang (Chinese: 德昂語; Burmese: တအာင်းဘာသာ), is a Austroasiatic dialect cluster spoken by over half a million people in Burma (Shan State) and neighboring countries. The Palaung people are divided into Palé (Ruching), Rumai, and Shwe, and each of whom have their own language.[2][3] The Riang languages are reported to be unintelligible or only understood with great difficulty by native speakers of the other Palaung languages.

A total number of speakers is uncertain; there were 150,000 Shwe speakers in 1982, 272,000 Ruching (Palé) speakers in 2000, and 139,000 Rumai speakers at an unrecorded date.[1] Palaung was classified as a "severely endangered" language in UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.[4][5] The Rulai dialect spoken near Lashio has regular phonological changes and some lexical differences from Ruching.[6]

  1. ^ a b Shwe at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
    Ruching at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
    Rumai at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ Waddington, Ray (2003). "The Palaung". The Peoples of the World Foundation. Retrieved 3 May 2012.
  3. ^ Klose, Albrecht (2001). Sprachen der Welt Ein weltweiter Index der Sprachfamilien, Einzelsprachen und Dialekte, mit Angabe der Synonyma und fremdsprachigen Äquivalente / Languages of the World: A Multi-lingual Concordance of Languages, Dialects, and Language-families (2nd rev. and enl. ed.). München: K.G. Saur. p. 403. ISBN 3-598-11404-4.
  4. ^ "UNESCO Interactive Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger". United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Retrieved 2020-06-03.
  5. ^ Moseley, Christopher (2010). Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. ISBN 978-92-3-104096-2.
  6. ^ "Myanmar". Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-10-10.