Rukai Language

Rukai Language

Rukai is the mother tongue of the Rukai people, an indigenous people of Taiwan. It is a divergent Formosan language of the Austronesian languages language family. There are some 10,000 speakers, some monolingual. There are several dialects, of which Mantauran, Tona, and Maga are divergent.

Rukai is unique for being the only Formosan language without a focus system. Tanan Rukai is also the Formosan language with the largest consonant inventory, with 23 consonants and 4 vowels having length contrast. Tanan Rukai also makes an animate/inanimate instead of a personal/non-personal one as most other Formosan languages do. Classifications by various scholars repeatedly find that Rukai is one of the, and often the, most divergent of the Austronesian languages. It is therefore prime evidence for reconstructing Proto-Austronesian. Ross (2009) notes that to date, reconstructions had not taken Rukai into account, and therefore cannot be considered valid for the entire family.