Tai Ya language

Not to be confused with Tai Yai (Shan) language or Tayal (Atayal) language.
Tai Ya
Tai Cung
Native toChina, thailand
Native speakers
50,000 (2000 census)[1]
Kra–Dai
Language codes
ISO 639-3cuu
Glottologtaiy1242

Tai Ya (Chinese: 傣雅语), also known as Tai Cung, Tai Chung and Dai Ya,[2] is a Southwestern Tai language of southern China. It has one dialect, Tai Hongjin (Chinese: 红金傣语); Red Tai.

Speakers of Tai Hongjin live in the Red River (红河 or 元江) and Jinsha River (金沙江) watershed regions of south-central Yunnan. Most are Buddhists, but few are Theravada. It is also spoken by around 5,000–6,000 people in Chiang Rai Province, Thailand.

Unlike other more widely studied Dai languages, Tai Ya has no traditional orthography, though it has a rich oral tradition.[3] Papers[4] have noted that this lack of orthography may endanger the survival of Tai Ya in future generations in Thailand, as the Tai Ya people shift towards the use of Northern Thai and Central Thai, due to the lack of literature in Tai Ya. However, it has been attested that language vitality as a whole (including the majority speakers in Yunnan Province) is high and "likely to be spoken by future generations".[3]

  1. ^ Tai Ya at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ William Frawley (1 May 2003). International Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford University Press. p. 210. ISBN 978-0-19-513977-8. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
  3. ^ a b Kirk R. Person; Wenxue Yang (2005). The Tones of Tai Ya. Department of Linguistics, School of Graduate Studies, Payap University. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
  4. ^ Tehan, T. Tehan; E. Dawkins (2010-12-07), "Tai Ya Reversing Language Shift 7 December 2010 1 Tai Ya in Thailand Present and Future: Reversing Language Shift" (PDF), Tai Ya Reversing Language Shift, pp. 2–3