Halang, also known as Salang, is a Bahnaric language of the Mon–Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family. It is spoken in the southern Laotian province of Attapu by approximately 4000 people and in the neighboring Kon Tum Province of Vietnam by approximately 13,500 people (Ethnologue, 2000).
In more specific usage, Halang refers to the dialect spoken in Vietnam, whereas Salang refers to the dialect spoken in Laos. Halang or Salang may also serve as an ethnonym for members of the ethnic group that speak the language. However, in Vietnam, the Halang speakers are officially classified as a subgroup of the larger Sedang ethnicity.
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“English general and singular terms, identity, quantification, and the whole bag of ontological tricks may be correlated with elements of the native language in any of various mutually incompatible ways, each compatible with all possible linguistic data, and none preferable to another save as favored by a rationalization of the native language that is simple and natural to us.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)