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Lhao Vo language

Lhaovo (the Burmese name: လော်ဝေါ်), also known as Maru (မရူ) and Langsu (the Chinese name: 浪速), is a Burmish language spoken in Burma and by a few thousand speakers in China.

Distribution

Dai Qingxia (2005:3) reports 5,600 Langsu speakers in China. Many thousands more are dispersed across the eastern edge of Kachin State, Myanmar.

  • Luxi City: Yingpan Township (ယင်းဖန်မြို့နယ်, 营盘乡)
  • Lianghe County: Mengyang Township (မယ်ညန့်နယ်, 养乡)
  • Longchuan County: Bangwai Township (ဖန်ဝိုင်မြို့နယ်, 邦外乡) and Jingkan Township (ကျင်ခန်မြို့နယ်, 景坎乡)

The Langsu people call themselves ' (Chinese: Lang'e 浪峨)

Varieties

The standard Lhaovo dialect is that of the Dago’ (') hill area, on the east side of N'Mai River valley in Kachin State.

Sawada (2017) lists the following patois (subvarieties) of Lhaovo.

  • Gyanno’ (autonym: '): spoken in the west side of the N'Mai River in Sawlaw Township.
  • Tho’lhang (autonym: '): spoken in Htawlang and a few other villages in northern Sawlaw Township.
  • Lakin (autonym: '): spoken in Lakin village, northern Sawlaw Township.
  • Lhangsu (autonym: '; not the same as Langsu 浪速 of Yunnan): spoken in the area between Hkrang Hka and Sanin Hka, which are two tributaries of the Mali Hka. It is spoken in Sumprabum Township, including in the villages of , and .

Langsong

The Langsong (浪宋) are found in Zaoyang (早阳) in Yunlong County (in the Chinese province of Yunnan) as well as in Baocun (表村), Laomo (老末), and Sancha (三岔). They reportedly speak a highly endangered language that may be possibly related to Langsu.

Phonology

Consonants

Lhao Vo has the following consonant sounds:

  • Sounds /p, t, k, ʔ, m, n, ŋ, j/ can all be heard in final position.
  • /ʔ/ is only written in final position.

Vowels

There is a distinction among creaky vowel sounds:

  • /i, ḭ/ can also range to [ɪ, ɪ̰].
  • Vowels /e, o/ when preceding a word-final /-ŋ/ can also be heard as nasalized [ẽ, õ].

When preceding a final glide /-j/, each vowel has the following allophones:

Tones

Lhao Vo has three lexical tones: high, low and falling. Low tone may be a different analysis of creaky vowels. In Latin script, falling tone is unmarked, e.g. etc.; low tone is etc., and high tone is etc. (or etc. with a final b, d, g). Final glottal stop is written etc. in falling tone, etc. in low tone, and in high tone.

References

Further reading

External links