Dong People - Language

Language

The Dong language (autonym: lix Gaeml) is a Tai–Kadai (Zhuang–Dong) language. Ethnologue distinguishes between two Dong dialects, with the codes kmc for the southern dialect and doc for the northern. Sui, Maonan, and Mulao are the Tai–Kadai languages which are most closely related to Dong.

The Dong people sometimes use Chinese characters to represent the sounds of Dong words. A new orthography based on the Latin alphabet was developed in 1958, but it is not used very much due to a lack of printed material and trained teachers.

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