Tai Dón language

Tai Dón, also known as Tai Khao or White Tai, is a Tai language of northern Vietnam, Laos and China.

Classification

Tai Dón is classified as belonging to the Tai-Kadai language group, located in the Tai languages and Southwestern Tai languages subgroups.

In China, White Tai people are located in the following townships of Yunnan province, with about 40,000 people.

Each syllable has at least one onset, one nucleus, and one tone. The following sections present the consonants, vowels, and tones in Tai Dón.

The following table presents the above consonant phonemes in words reported in Hudak's book.

There are four consonant clusters that occur at the beginning of a syllable.

Tai Dón has nine short vowels, and one long vowel. However, the short vowels are phonetically realized as long in final position.

There are six tones on a smooth syllable.

Description	Tone letters	Example
level, slightly lower than mid	22	/kaː˨˨/ "crow"
high-rising	45	/kaː˦˥/ "all the way to"
low-rising, glottalized	24ʔ	/kaː˨˦ʔ/ "young rice plant"
level, somewhat higher than mid	44	/kaː˦˦/ "stuck"
level, somewhat higher than mid with a rise and fall	454	/kaː˦˥˦/ "price"
falling, glottalized	31ʔ	/kaː˧˩ʔ/ "to trade"

Two of the six tones occur on a checked syllable.

Tone	Vowel length	Example
high-rising	short	/sat˦˥/ "animal"
high-rising	long	/ʔaːp˦˥/ "to bathe"
level, somewhat higher than mid	short	/mot˦˦/ "ant"
level, somewhat higher than mid	long	/laːt˦˦/ "to cover"

Shown below are consonants of Tai Don with two tonal registers.

Shown below are final consonants of Tai Don with short vowel on top and other vowels on the bottom.