Hlai language
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| Hlai | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | People's Republic of China | |
| Region | Hainan | |
| Total speakers | 615 000 (as of 1999) | |
| Language family | Kradai
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | None | |
| ISO 639-2 | – | |
| ISO 639-3 | lic | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Hlai is one of two languages of the Hlai or Li people, the other being the Jiamao "dialect". It is spoken by 600,000 people (not counting Jiamao), a quarter of them monolingual, in the mountains of central and south-central Hainan Island. It forms one of the primary branches of the Kradai family.
Hlai has several dialects, some perhaps divergent enough to be considered separate languages. The main divisions are Ha 哈 (the prestige dialect), Qi aka Gei 杞, Meifu aka Moifau 美孚, and Bendi aka Zwn, in addition to Jiamao aka Kamau 加茂, which is not mutually intelligible with the others.
Hlai did not have a writing system until the 1950s, when the Latin alphabet was adopted.
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