Mulam language

Mulam
Native to China
Region Luocheng County, Hechi, northern Guangxi
Ethnicity 210,000 (2000 census)[1]
Native speakers
 86,000 (2005)[1]
< 10,000 monolinguals
Language codes
ISO 639-3 mlm
Glottolog mula1253[2]

The Mulam language Chinese: 仫佬; pinyin: Mùlǎo 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" (Wang & Zheng 1980).

The Mulam language, like Dong, does not have voiced stops. However, it does contain unvoiced and voiced nasals and laterals. Its vowel system contains eleven vowels. It is a tonal language with ten tones and 65% of their vocabulary is shared with the Zhuang and Dong languages.

Since the Ming dynasty, Chinese characters have been utilized to read and write the Mulam language. The majority of the Mulam also speak Chinese as well as the Zhuang and Dong languages.

Google Scholar provides additional resources such as the impact of another variable coinciding with the already endangered language. It also lists a comparative Kadai of Linguistic Studies Beyond Tai.

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…” (Oceanic Linguistics, Vol. 33, No 2). 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 Mulam Phonology, 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 (1271-1368), differing from the current society they have now as the people of Mulam eventually split in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912).

The Mulam minority has no system of religious beliefs, the people of Mulam believe in the natural spirits influenced by Buddhism and Taoism. The way in which the Mulam people express their religion is through hosting festivals. Every year on the third of May in correlation with the Lunar Calendar, the people of Mulam worship the goddess "Madam of Flower." The Madam of Flower is the goddess of life and death. The tradition is celebrated through the people of Mulam collecting money and sacrificing pigs to show their worship towards her. Every year on the eighth of April, they worship the god of cattle. It is a tradition that is expressed through the gratitude they have towards the cattle. On this day, they will feed the cattle well and keep it from doing any work. It is their way of thanking the cattle for working graciously throughout the year.

Apart from the religious festivals the Mulam people host yearly, they are also responsible for hosting the Yifan Festival, hosted once every three years. The Yifan Festival is of upmost importance and a majority of the people participate in it as they worship the gods hoping it will exorcise the current evil that may be present in their lives as well as thanking the gods for another year of prospering harvests. They celebrate this festival similar to the way in which they worship the Madam of Flower by sacrificing pigs. However, they also sacrifice chickens as they sing songs while the dragons and lions are present as they hold a sermon. Differing from the religious festivals, the slope-walking festival is made for when a man is in love with a woman. Through this festival, the people dress up as they walk in groups towards the slopes while singing folk songs.

It is important to note that the Mulam language does not have its own writing characters, however, it does not affect the language itself when spoken. The majority of the Mulam population are bilingual as they speak Mulam and the Zhuang language.


Dialects

Mulam dialects as described by Wang & Zheng (1980) include (all of which are spoken in Luocheng Mulao Autonomous County):

References

  1. 1 2 Mulam at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Mulam". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

External links

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