Kadu language


Kadu or Kado is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Sal branch spoken in Sagaing Region, Myanmar. Dialects are Settaw, Mawkhwin, and Mawteik , with 30,000 speakers total.

Names

Alternate names for Kadu listed in Ethnologue are Gadu, Ka’do, Kadu-Ganaan, Kantu’, Kato, Kudo, Maw, Mawteik, Puteik, and Thet; the autonym is Asak.

Geographical distribution

Statistics for Kadu-speaking villages are as follows.
There is low mutual intelligibility among the Kadu dialects.

History

The Kadu were the dominant ethnic group in the Chindwin River valley at the beginning of the early 2nd millennium A.D. until the Chin people and subsequently the Shan people migrated into the Chindwin Valley.

Phonology

Vowels

Kadu vowels consist of eight monophthongs and a diphthong /ai/.
FrontCentralBack
Closeiu
Close-mideɘo
Open-midɛɔ
Opena

Consonants

Kadu has 20 consonants.
The final consonants need to be nasals /m, n, ŋ/ or voiceless stops /p, t, k, ʔ/.

Tone

Kadu has three tones; high, mid, and low.

Syllabic structure

C1C2V1V2C3
C: Consonant
V: Vowel
C1: necessary, this can be any Kadu consonant except unvoiced nasals.
C2: optional, this can be only /l, w, y/.
V1: necessary, this can be any Kadu vowel, however, /ɘ/ appears only in the form of CɘC.
V2: optional.
C3: optional, this can be only /p, t, m, n, ʔ, ŋ/.

Grammar

Kadu is an SOV language.

Nouns

Abstract nouns such as freedom, love, experience, and anger are not attested in the Kadu noun class. They are usually expressed by verbs or adjectival verbs.
The language has two categories of nouns:
1, So called "simple nouns" are treated as monomorphemic by the native speakers.
2, Nouns known as "complex nouns" are polymorphemic, and most of the complex nouns come from the process of compounding.

Verbs

Adjectives that expresses dimensions and qualities such as "tong" and "lom" function as verbs, and are categorized as verbs.
The verbs are structurally categorized as:
1, Simple verbs, which are treated as monomorphemic words by the native speakers.
and
2, Polymorphemic complex verbs.
Kadu verbs may be reduplicated using the same morpheme or may take attendant words to express the repeated or frequent actions.
V-V constructions function as resultative, directional, evaluative, explanatory, or manner.

Adverbs

The adverbs are also "simple" or "complex" like nouns and verbs.
One thing to point up is that the complex adverbs are derived from verbs or nominals by the processes of reduplication or semi-reduplication.

Numerals

Most of the native numerals in Kadu are lost.
Numerals are always attached to classifiers, although classifiers do not occur with multiples of ten.
As for ordinal numbers, Burmese ordinal numbers are used because the original ordinal numbers are already lost.

Pronouns

Quantifiers

Quantifiers follow the head noun they quantify.

Particles

There are nominal relational markers, verbal particles, clausal particles, utterance final particles, and speaker attitude particles.

Interrogatives

Yes/no interrogatives

Yes/no questions are formed by simply adding either of the two interrogative particles "la" and "ka" at the end of the phrase.

Alternative questions

Yes/no questions can also be expressed by an alternative interrogative expression like "is it A or not A", which can be found in Mandarin Chinese as well.

Tag questions

Interrogative sentences can be made by adding "chi" at the end of sentences, like "right?" in English language.

Wh- questions

Wh- questions are formed by attaching the Wh-word forming morphemes, "ma" or "ha", to specific nomials or nominal postpositions.
Wh- question words also may function as indefinite pronouns such as "whatever", "anyone" and so on.

Negation

Verbs can be negated by negative proclitics, "a-" and "in-".

Words