Hlai Language
Hlai (Chinese: 黎语) 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 family of Tai–Kadai languages.
Hlai did not have a writing system until the 1950s, when the Latin script was adopted.
Read more about Hlai Language: Dialects
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)