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Language Lineage

Hlai

The languages of the Li people of Hainan, which separated from the other Kra-Dai languages when their speakers crossed to the island.

c. 1st millennium BCE – presentThe interior of Hainan Island, China
On this page
  1. The Island Branch
  2. Dialects, Outliers and a Separate Vocabulary
  3. Where it's spoken
  4. Turning points

01

The Island Branch

Hlai (Li) is spoken by more than half a million people in the mountains of Hainan Island. It is one of the most distinct Kra-Dai branches. On Hainan it has neighbours of other families: Chinese, and Tsat (Utsat), a Chamic Austronesian language brought by settlers from the coast of Vietnam and related to the Malayic languages of the Austronesian tree. Hainan came under Chinese administration in the Han dynasty, and Chinese settlement gradually pushed the Hlai into the interior.

02

Dialects, Outliers and a Separate Vocabulary

Hlai is not one language but a cluster. Chinese descriptions distinguish several main dialect groups, among them Ha, Qi, Meifu and Bendi, which are not all mutually intelligible, and Peter Norquest's reconstruction of Proto-Hlai (2007) compares varieties from across the island.

Two languages on the edge of the cluster complicate the picture. Cun is spoken by around 60,000 people on the west coast of Hainan who are officially classified as Han Chinese, yet their language is Hlai. Jiamao, in the southeast, has Hlai grammar and much Hlai vocabulary, but a large part of its basic vocabulary cannot be traced to Hlai; Norquest and others suggest that it began as a different language whose speakers later adopted Hlai.

Hlai is also useful for its separateness. Having been on Hainan for a long time, it often uses its own word where Tai and Kam-Sui share one: 'die' is ɬaːu and 'bird' taȶ, not the Tai forms. It also has far fewer early Chinese loanwords than Tai. That independent testimony is why comparativists treat Hlai as a primary branch rather than an offshoot of Tai.

On the map

Where it’s spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. Chinac. 700,000

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Splitc. 1st millennium BCEContested

    Across to Hainan

    The ancestors of the Hlai cross to Hainan Island and separate from mainland Kra-Dai. The date of the crossing is uncertain.

    Sources (1)
    • Diller, Anthony V. N., Jerold A. Edmondson & Yongxian Luo, eds. 2008. The Tai-Kadai Languages. London: Routledge.
  2. Contact110 BCE onward

    Chinese administration

    The Han dynasty establishes commanderies on Hainan. Over the following centuries Chinese settlement along the coasts confines Hlai speakers to the interior.

    Sources (1)
    • Diller, Anthony V. N., Jerold A. Edmondson & Yongxian Luo, eds. 2008. The Tai-Kadai Languages. London: Routledge.
  3. Writing1957

    A Latin alphabet for Hlai

    As part of the programme of writing systems for China's minority languages, a Latin-based alphabet is created for Hlai, though it has seen limited use.

    Sources (1)
    • Diller, Anthony V. N., Jerold A. Edmondson & Yongxian Luo, eds. 2008. The Tai-Kadai Languages. London: Routledge.