Mulam language


The Mulam language is a Kam–Sui language spoken mainly in Luocheng County, Hechi, northern Guangxi by the Mulao people. The greatest concentrations are in Dongmen and Siba communes. Their autonym is mu6 lam1. The Mulam also call themselves kjam1, which is probably cognate with lam1 and the Dong people's autonym "Kam".
The Mulam language, like Dong, does not have voiced stop, but does have a phonemic distinction between unvoiced and voiced nasals and laterals. It has a system of eleven distinct vowels. It is a tonal language with ten tones, and 65% of its vocabulary is shared with the Zhuang and Dong languages.
The majority of the Mulam also speak Chinese as well as the Zhuang and Dong languages.
The language of Mulam leads to a comparison between two languages as Graham Thurgood states, "For 'headlouse', the KS forms are highly irregular: Kam, Mulam…". This relates to the way in which one language can be interpreted through another language, which displays a level of diversity as they may derive different meanings from the translations. Within , there is a display of the syllables for Mulam that seems very difficult to decipher without having much knowledge of how they communicate with the dialect. The Mulam ethnic group traces back to the Yuan Dynasty, differing from the current society they have now as the people of Mulam eventually split in the Qing Dynasty.
The majority of the Mulam population are bilingual in the Mulam and the Zhuang language.

Dialects

The following Mulam dialects are described by Wang & Zheng .
The following comparison of Mulam dialects is from Ni Dabai.
English glossChinese glossQiaotou 桥头Huangjin 黄金Siba 四把Dongmen 东门Long'an 龙岸
die死tai1tai1pɣai1tai1tai1
medicine药ta2ta2kɣa2-tsa2
intestines肠子taːi3taːi3kɣaːi3khɣaːi3tsaːi3
cloud云ma3ma3kwa3kwa3fa3
bran细糠pwa6pwa6kwa6kwa6fa6
dog狗m̥a1m̥a1ŋwa1ŋ̥wa1m̥a1
hair, fur毛发pəm1pəm1pɣam1pɣam1kjam1