User:Sli5/Language selection

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Language Selection

I want to work with Yana Yuan. (wikis.swarthmore.edu/ling073/User:xyuan2/Language_selection)

My language selection is here:

  • Zazaki
  • Bouyei
  • Cham

Zazaki

Morphological Typology

Zazaki is a fusional language with agglutinative features. The grammatical information is not expressed only through separate words. Verbs and nouns in Zazaki carry grammatical meaning through morphological changes. And Zazaki words commonly encode multiple grammatical categories. At the same time, Zazaki exhibits agglutinative tendencies, particularly in verbal and derivational morphology, where affixes can be more transparently segmented and stacked.

Basic Information

Zazaiki is an Iranian language belonging to the Northwestern Iranian branch, and spoken by Zaza people. It has multiple dialects and is classified by international linguistic authorities as a macrolanguage encompassing varieties such as Northern Zaza and Southern Zaza alongside the inclusive code zza. Zazaki is traditionally written in the Latin script and has around 1.48 million or more speakers, though some estimates place the total between two and three million.

Most Zazaki native speakers are multilingual, commonly also using Turkish, and Kurdish dialects alongside Zazaki in some regions. Younger generations increasingly shift to Turkish as their primary language, which potentially leads to endangerment and declining intergenerational transmission, and UNESCO classifies the language as vulnerable.

The ISO 639-2 code for Zazaki is “zza”. Southern Zazaki's code is diq, the the northern one is kiu.

Easy to find resources?

Yes, I can easily find at least a few pages’ worth of text in Zazaki online with just a quick search.

Bouyei

Morphological Typology

Bouyei is typologically isolating and analytic. Bouyei Words are generally monomorphemic, there is little to no inflection, and grammatical relationships are expressed primarily through word order, particles, and function words rather than bound morphology. Nouns do not inflect for case, number, or gender. Verbs lack agreement and tense inflection, with time and aspect marked by preverbal particles and adverbs. Lexical expansion relies heavily on compounding and serial verb constructions, and tone plays a central role in distinguishing meaning. It's clearly under the influence by Chinese, but its core grammar remains strongly analytic.

Basic Information

Bouyei is a Northern Tai language spoken primarily in southern China, especially in Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan, with smaller speaker communities in Vietnam and Laos as well. It has about 3.5 million native speakers according to census and linguistic estimates, making it one of the larger non-Sinitic minority languages in China. Many Bouyei speakers are bilingual in Mandarin Chinese because of the required schooling in China, and some Giay speakers in Vietnam likewise speak Vietnamese. Intergenerational transmission remains relatively vigorous in rural Bouyei communities, though Mandarin pressure in urban and educational contexts poses challenges in longer terms.

The ISO 639-3 code is "pcc".

Easy to find resources?

It's relatively not easy to find pages of written Bouyei resources. Most things I found are audio and video resources.

Cham

Morphological Typology

is typologically isolating to mildly analytic, with very little inflectional morphology and a strong reliance on word order, particles, and function words to express grammatical relationships. Nouns do not inflect for case, gender, or number; plurality and definiteness are conveyed through numerals, classifiers, or context. Verbs likewise lack agreement and tense inflection, with time, aspect, and modality expressed by preverbal or postverbal particles and adverbs. Most morphological complexity in Cham appears in derivation and compounding rather than inflection, and lexical relationships are often built through multiword constructions rather than affixation. Compared with many Indo-European languages, Cham words are short and morphologically simple, placing the language firmly toward the isolating end of the morphological typology spectrum, though limited derivational prefixes and historical affixes show that it is not purely monomorphemic.

Basic Information

Cham is an Austronesian language spoken primarily in Vietnam and Cambodia, with smaller communities in Thailand and Laos. They put the total number of speakers at roughly 491,448 people, divided between Western Cham (most numerous in Cambodia and adjacent Vietnam) and Eastern Cham. Most Cham speakers are bilingual in the dominant language of their country such as Vietnamese or Khmer, and there is endangerment of intergenerational transmission, especially among younger generations, though community efforts exist to maintain use.

Cham has ISO 639-3 codes including cjm for Eastern Cham and cmu for Western Cham. It does not have a single ISO 639-2 three-letter code.

Easy to find resources?

I quickly found a few pages in Cham online.

Reference:

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