For those who have just joined the discussion you may first like to refer to the introduction to Zhuang post first. Please subscribe to my RSS feed so you do not miss another exciting entry. Thanks again for subscribing!

There are many Zhuang languages most of them living in mountain regions of Guangxi Zhuang zu autonomous region but many more throughout southwestern China each one with their own cultural customs and Zhuang language that is often non-comprehensive by differing Zhuang communities. Here is a sample numbers from 1 to 10 in the Ningming Zhuang language of southwestern Guangxi.

For those of you who have studied Cantonese (Guangzhou dialect, Guangdong dialect), you may have noticed that the above Zhuang gramatical expression “～過” is exactly the same as Cantonese.

In today’s Han language (Mandarin and classical Han language) “比” is used. Zhuang also uses the expression “比” but this is the influence from modern day Mandarin. As I have mentioned in Part 7, Cantonese is a language that was formed form the influence of ancient Bai Yue (古代百越) so it is thought that “～過” was borrowed from Zhuang. It is recognized that influence from Zhuang in Cantonese came from pronounciation, grammer, and words.

(more…)

Complex sentences
Complex sentences are sentences that include more than one nominal, adjectival or adverbial parts in one sentence as a subordinate clause.
1. Nominal: The sentence just becomes the subject and object.

Doxdub mbouj ndei, bouxlawz mbouj rox? Who doesn’t know that fignting is not good?
rox = to know

Gou rox mwngz vihmaz mbouj gamj gangj okdaeuj. I know why you don’t dare to speak.
gamj < 敢; okdaeuj = to come out, get out

(more…)