User:Preth1/Language selection

Language & Partner Selection

Potential Partner(s)

I would like to work with Chung Sze Kwok, Katelyn Becker, and/or Nyvisalsnuk Rith!

Languages in Order of Preference

1. Mon
2. Unami (or Lenape)
3. Tai Lue

Unami might actually be more suitable for this class since it has a richer morphological system than Mon.

Mon

Basic Information

• Autonym: ဘာသာမန် [pʰesa mɑn]
• Other Names: မွန်ဘာသာစကား (Burmese), ภาษามอญ (Thai)
• Language Family: Austroasiatic > Monic
• ISO 639: mnw (Modern Mon)
• Speakers: 851,000 (total in all countries); spoken by the Mon people
• Location: Southern Myanmar (Mon State, Kayin State, Tanintharyi Region), Thailand; recognized minority language in both countries.
• Language Status: 5 (developing) in Myanmar, 6b (threatened) in Thailand
  • Developing: "language is in vigorous use, with literature in a standardized form being used by some though this is not yet widespread or sustainable."
  • Threatened: "language is used for face-to-face communication within all generations, but it is losing users."

Language Features

• SVO
• Non-tonal (unlike Burmese and Thai)
• Orthography: Mon-Burmese script (Mon alphabet)
• Morphological Typology:
  • primarily isolating with little to no inflectional morphology, which is common in Austroasiatic languages. It does have some remnants of Old Mon's rich inflectional system, but those processes are no longer productive.

Resources for Mon

Here are some online resources I found for Mon:

• Omniglot: contains a sample translation of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

• A Short Introduction to the Mon Language: contains some basic words and phrases in Mon with glosses though only IPA is provided

• The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages: contains a grammatical description of Modern Mon with some example sentences and glossed texts (I have a PDF copy)

• Open Languages Archives Community (OPAC): a compilation of resources on Mon including a Mon translation of Genesis by The British and Foreign Bible Society though there doesn't seem to be a corresponding translation

• Bible texts in Mon

• SEAlang Library Mon

• There are also some YouTube videos in Mon such as "Tin Mya's story (Mon language)", "Cho Zin's story (Mon language)", and an RFA Mon Language TV Program with captions though they're embedded in the videos.

Sources: Ethnologue (Mon), Wikipedia (Mon language), A Short Introduction to the Mon Language

Unami (or Lenape)

Basic Information

• Autonym: Wënami èlixsuwakàn (Unami) or Lënapei lixsëwakàn (Lenape)
• Other Names: Delaware, Lenape, Lenni-Lenape
• Language Family: Algic > Eastern Algonquian
• ISO 639: unm
• Speakers: "No known L1 speakers, but emerging L2 speakers. The last known speaker, Edward Thompson, died in 2002. Ethnic population: 11,000 (2015)."
• Location: southern New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Oklahoma
• Language Status: 9 (Reawakening)
  • "The ethnic community associated with a dormant language is working to establish more uses and more users for the language with the results that new L2 speakers are emerging."

Language Features

• Word order is more fluid than in English because most of the information is encoded in the verb. However, in general, there seems to be more data on its morphology than its syntax.

• Orthography: there doesn't seem to be a standard writing system, but there are practical phonetic alphabets based on the Latin script such as the one used for the Lenape Talking Dictionary:
  • e.g. òkwës (fox), Nulamàlsi (I am fine), Làpìch knewël (I'll see you again)

• Morphological Typology:
  • highly agglutinative and polysynthetic
    • e.g. verbs in Unami have markings for person and number and inflections for order (independent, conjunct, imperative), aspect, and the negative.

Resources for Unami (or Lenape)

Here are some online resources I found for Unami (or Lenape):

• Omniglot (Unami)
• Lenape translation of "Silent Night" with a literal English translation
• Official Website of the Delaware Tribe of Indians: contains links to some word lists and stories in Lenape
• The Lenape Talking Dictionary: provides an extensive searchable dictionary of Lenape words, sentences, stories, grammar, songs, and lessons with audio recordings of native speakers
• Lenni-Lenape Word List
• Paper on the "Verbal Morphology of the Southern Unami Dialect of Lenape"
• Open Languages Archive Community (OPAC): compilation of resources in and about the Unami language

Sources: Sam Noble Museum (Unami language), Ethnologue (Unami), Wikipedia (Unami language), Wikipedia (Delaware languages)

Tai Lue

Basic Information

• Autonym: ᦅᧄᦺᦑᦟᦹᧉ‎ (Kam Tai Lue), ᦺᦑ ᦟᦹᧉ‎ (Dai Lue)
• Other Names: Dai, Dai Lue, Xishuangbanna Dai, Lü
• Language Family: Kra-Dai > Tai > Southwestern
• ISO 639: khb
• Speakers: 555,760 (total in all countries)
• Location: China (Yunnan), Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam
• Language Status: 6a (vigorous)
  • Vigorous: "The language is used for face-to-face communication by all generations and the situation is sustainable."

Language Features

• SVO; modifiers follow nouns

• Tonal with 6 phonemic tones

• Orthography: 3 different scripts
  • ancient Fak Kham script
  • Tham script: also called "老傣文" (lao dai wen) in Chinese)
  • New Tai Lue script: modernization of the Lanna alphabet, which is similar to the Thai alphabet

• Morphological Typology:
  • not clear but I assume it's primarily isolating like many Kra-Dai languages.
  • Like Thai and Lao, Tai Lue has many Sanskrit and Pali loan words and affixes. It also has 95% lexical similarity with Northern Thai (Lanna), 86% with Central Thai, and 93% with Shan.

Resources for Tai Lue

Here are some online resources I found for Tai Lue:

• Omniglot (Numbers in Tai Lue)
• Some YouTube videos of stories in Tai Lue with English captions: "The Man with Two Wives - A Tai Lue Folktale", "What the Buffalo Told the Humans" - A Tai Lue Folktale
• Open Language Archives Community (OLAC): a compilation of resources in and about Lü (or Tai Lue) including primary texts (though some are not easily accessible or available)
• Paper on "Twenty functional categories compared between Thai and Lue": contains some example sentences and words in Tai Lue though mostly in IPA with glosses
• A Dai-Lue Dictionary: contains some words and example sentences in Dai Lue with English translations (though the search engine is not very easy to navigate)
• This site has digital scans of a handwritten Tai Lue manuscript.

Sources: Ethnologue (Lü), Tai Lue language