Semai_language

Semai language

Semai language

Austroasiatic language spoken in Malaysia

Semai (engrok Semai) is a Austroasiatic language of western Malaysia spoken by about 60,438 Semai people. It is one of the few Aslian languages which are not endangered, and even has 2,000 monolingual speakers. It is currently spoken by 3 main groups; the Northern Semai, Central Semai and the Southern Semai.

Quick Facts Native to, Ethnicity ...

Phonology

One notable aspect of Semai phonology is its highly irregular pattern of expressive reduplication, showing discontiguous copying from just the edges of the reduplicant's base, thus forming a minor syllable.

Vowels

More information Front, Central ...
More information Front, Central ...

Consonants

More information Bilabial, Alveolar ...

Examples

Examples of words in Semai include the following:

More information English, Malay ...
  • Asli (2017),[3] a film directed by David Liew, is about a bi-racial girl on a road to discover her cultural heritage, is the first film to use the Semai language in 50% of its dialogue.[4]

References

  1. [1]
    "Basic Data / Statistics". JAKOA. Retrieved 30 October 2022.
  2. [2]
    Semai at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016) Closed access icon
  3. [3]
    "Asli". Cinema Online. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  4. [4]
    Loh, Ivan (19 October 2017). "Semai Dialogue a First in Local Film". The Star. Retrieved 3 February 2021.

Further reading

  • Diffloth, Gerard. 1976a. Minor-Syllable Vocalism in Senoic Languages. In Philip N. Lenner, Laurence C. Thompson, and Stanley Starosta (eds.), Austroasiatic Studies, Part I, 229–247. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press.
  • Diffloth, Gerard. 1976b. Expressives in Semai. In Philip N. Lenner, Laurence C. Thompson, and Stanley Starosta (eds.), Austroasiatic Studies, Part I, 249–264. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press.
  • Hendricks, Sean. 2001. Bare-Consonant Reduplication Without Prosodic Templates: Expressive Reduplication in Semai. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 10: 287–306.
  • Phillips, Timothy C. 2013. Linguistic Comparison of Semai Dialects. SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2013-010: 1–111.
Semai language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator


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