A preliminary phonological sketch of Va, an Angkuic language

The Northern Va language belongs to the Angkuic subgroup of the Palaungic branch of Austroasiatic (Hsiu 2015), and is spoken in Mojiang County of south-central Yunnan Province, China. The language name Va comes from the the speakers’ self-designated name (autonym), vaʔ⁵¹. Despite the speakers having the autonym vaʔ⁵¹, the Va language does not belong to the Waic subgroup. Va is also tonal unlike most Waic languages. Although this paper specifically describes Northern Va and not Southern Va, Northern Va will simply be referred to as Va in this paper. Unless noted otherwise, Va is used to Northern Va and not Southern Va specifically.

Speakers of Va are classified as ethnic Bulang by the Chinese government, and are also locally referred to by neighboring ethnic groups as the Bulang people (Hsiu 2015). According to my informant, there are about 600 Va households comprising approximately 2,000 individuals in Taihe Administrative Village 太和行政村 in Jingxing Township 景星乡, Mojiang County, Yunnan Province, China. The language is spoken vigorously by all age groups, including children. From my personal observations in the Va villages, on the EGIDS scale, Va would be considered to be at 6a (vigorous), but may be leaning towards 6b (threatened) due to widespread urban migration to Kunming city and Guangdong province.

The only previous documentation of Va is that of Simao (1990), an unpublished Chinese internal government manuscript1. Although Simao (1990) and I both have Va lexical data from the same village of Wamo, Simao (1990) differs significantly from mine. I have not found Simao (1990) to be usable since it contains many transcription errors.

Since no comprehensive sociolinguistic surveys or intelligibility tests have yet been conducted, it cannot be said if Northern Va and Southern Va are indeed separate languages. For now, the name “Va” will be used. No ISO 639-3 code exists for Northern Va as of now.