Palaung language
Palaung or Ta'ang (Burmese: ပလောင်ဘာသာ), also known as De'ang (Chinese: 德昂語; Burmese: တအာင်းဘာသာ), is a Austroasiatic dialect cluster spoken by over half a million people in Burma (Shan State) and neighboring countries. The Palaung people are divided into Palé (Ruching), Rumai, and Shwe, and each of whom have their own language. The Riang languages are reported to be unintelligible or only understood with great difficulty by native speakers of the other Palaung languages.
| Palaung | |
|---|---|
| De'ang, Ta'ang ပလောင်ဘာသာ, တအောင်းဘာသာ | |
| Native to | Burma, China, Thailand |
| Ethnicity | Ta'ang |
Native speakers | (ca. 560,000 cited 1982–??) |
Austroasiatic
| |
| Burmese, Tai Le | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Variously:pll – Shwepce – Ruchingrbb – Rumai |
| Glottolog | pala1336 |
A total number of speakers is uncertain; there were 150,000 Shwe speakers in 1982, 272,000 Ruching (Palé) speakers in 2000, and 139,000 Rumai speakers at an unrecorded date. Palaung was classified as a "severely endangered" language in UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. The Rulai dialect spoken near Lashio has regular phonological changes and some lexical differences from Ruching.