Jiamao (also 台 Tái or 塞 Sāi) is a divergent Kra-Dai language or possible language isolate spoken in southern Hainan, China. Jiamao speakers' autonym is 1.

Classification

Jiamao is often classified one of the Hlai languages, which constitute a primary branch of the Kra–Dai language family, but Norquest (2007, 2015) and others note that Jiamao has a non-Hlai substratum. Graham Thurgood (1992) suggested that Jiamao might have an Austroasiatic substratum. Norquest (2007) identified various lexical items in Jiamao that do not reconstruct to Proto-Hlai and later firmly established it as a non-Hlai language. Hsiu (2018) notes that Jiamao also contains various words borrowed from an unknown, currently extinct Tibeto-Burman branch.

Demographics

In the 1980s, Jiamao was spoken by 50,000 people in central and south-central Hainan, mostly in Jiamao Township (加茂镇) in Baoting Li and Miao Autonomous County. It shares less than half of its lexicon with the Hlai languages. In Lingshui Li Autonomous County, Jiamao is spoken in Benhao (本号), Nanping (南平), Wenluo (文罗), Zuguan (祖关), Longguang (隆广), and Tianzi (田仔). In Lingshui County, Jiamao is known as Tái (台), and is also known as Sāi (塞) or Jiāwǒ (加我). There are four Jiamao dialects, namely Jiamao (加茂), Liugong (六弓), Tianzi (田仔), and Qunying (群英). Jiamao is spoken in the following villages and townships of southern Hainan. The Liaoergong (廖二弓) dialect is documented in Huang (2011).

Phonology

Tones

Jiamao has 8 distinct tone categories (Norquest 2015:311): Like Proto-Be, Jiamao does not distinguish between tone categories B and C, but rather only has an X category. As noted by Thurgood (1992) and Norquest (2015), these do not correspond to Hlai tones, but rather initials in Proto-Hlai. High register tones are derived from unvoiced initials, and low register tones from voiced initials.