Nùng Cháo/Longzhou Zhuang

Nùng Cháo is a subgroup of the Nùng whose language is classified into Cetral Tai branch of Tai family. Their origin can be traced back to Longzhou county of Guangxi. The Nùng Cháo live in some parts of Lang Son and Cao Bang provinces of Vietnam. In 1935, linguist Li Fang Kuei obtained linguistic data in the town of Lungchow (Longzhou) and subsequently published it in 1940 along with folk takes, stories, ad poems. His data shows a great resemblance to the Nùng Cháo's language that was collected later by other researchers. It should be pointed out that there exists another Central Tai group living in Jinlong area of Longzhou county called Tày. Though differing in ethonym, but the Tay of Jinlong are in fact a Longzhou Zhuang group. They claim that their ancestors came originally from Hải Dương (海陽) province, south of the Red River midway between Hanoi and Haiphong, beginning some 14 generations previously (around 600 years ago). They migrated to the north via Thái Nguyên (太原), Bắc Ninh (北寧), Sơn Tây (山西), and Cao Bằng (高平), then moved east across the border to Jinlong.

As a Central Tai langauge, Nung Chao/Longzhou Zhuang possesses a distinct word for cow mɔ:³ that does not exist in Southwestern Tai languages ŋua. Linguists have been puzzled over this difference in a very basic word between these two major branches of Tai family which, otherwise, should have been cognates. The following table shows a lexical comparison between Nùng Cháo and Li Fang Kuei's Lungchow.

English	Nùng Cháo (IPA)	Lungchow (IPA)
to bind	pʰŭk35	pʰuk55
to come	ma:31	ma:31
sugar	tʰɯŋ33	tʰɪ̈ɪ̈ŋ33
to arrive	tʰɯ̆ŋ33	tʰɪ̈ŋ33
animal	tu:33	tu:33
bean	tʰu:35	tʰu:55
ear	hu:33	hu:33
rightside	ɬa:33	ɬa:33
ten	ɬĭp35	ɬip55
bitter	kʰŭm33	kʰum33
son-in-law	kʰɯi33	kʰɪ̈ɪ̈i33
rice	kʰău24	kʰau24
swallow	nĭnʔ32	nɪ̈n24
palm hand	pʰa:24	pʰa:24
to weave	tăm35	tam55
wide	kwa:ŋ24	kwa:ŋ24
flesh	nuʔ32	nɪ̈iʔ21
few, little	noiʔ32	no:iʔ21
sunshine	ɗɛ:t35	de:t55

Li's ɪ̈ is equivalent to ɯ