Kavalan Language - Dialects

Dialects

Kavalan consists the following speech communities ordered from north to south (Li 2006:1):

• Kariawan (Jialiwan 加禮宛) - near Hualien, a formerly Sakizaya-speaking area
• Patʀungan (Xinshe 新社) - located in Fungpin (豐濱鄉), Hualien
• Kulis (Lide 立德)
• Kralut (Zhangyuan 樟原)

These speech communities in eastern Taiwan were named after older settlements from the north, such as Kariawan, Sahut, and Tamayan, where the Kavalan people originally migrated from. Modern-day Kavalan speakers are surrounded by the Amis.

Many Kavalan can also speak Amis, Taiwanese, Mandarin, and Japanese (Li 2006:1).