Urak Lawoiʼ
อูรักลาโวยจ
Native to	Thailand
Region	Phuket,Krabi,Satun
Ethnicity	Urak Lawoiʼ
Native speakers	5,000 (2012)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian (disputed) Malayic Urak Lawoiʼ
Dialects	Phuket Lanta (Sangka-u) Adang
Writing system	Thai script (usually oral)
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Thailand native to the provinces ofPhuket,Krabi,Satun
Regulated by	Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia,Mahidol University
Language codes
ISO 639-3	urk
Glottolog	urak1238
ELP	Urak Lawoi'

Urak Lawoiʼ orUrak Lawoc (Urak Lawoiʼ:อูรักลาโวยจ,[ˈurʌkˈlawʊjʔ]) is aMalayic language spoken in southern Thailand.

The Orang (Suku) Laut who live betweenSumatra and theMalay Peninsula speak divergent Malayic lects, which bear some intriguing connections to various Sumatran Malay varieties.^[2]

• Inclosed syllables, some vowels change theirquality:
  • /a/ becomes[ʌ] (/ˈrawak/[ˈraˑwʌk] 'space').
  • /i/ becomes[ɪ] (/ˈbaliʔ/[ˈbaˑlɪʔ] 'return').
  • /o/ becomes[ʊ] (/ˈproc/[ˈprʊiʔ] 'stomach').
• Epenthetic/j/ and/w/ are added afterhigh vowels/i/,/u/ respectively (/ˈsiˑjak/ 'light',/ˈbuˑwak/ 'to throw away').
• Vowels are somewhatallophonicallylengthened in stressed open syllables.
• Vowels other than/ə/ are slightlynasalized afternasal consonants. If the following syllable has/w/,/j/ as the onset, this onset is also nasalized (/məˈnaŋɛh/[məˈnãˑŋɛ̃h] 'to cry',/ˈɲawa/[ˈɲãˑw̃ã] 'body, self').

Notes: In theThai script, the left column represents diacritics for open syllables, while the right one for closed syllables. For syllables with vowelö, before consonantsk,m,n,ng,p, andt, the vowel is not written. Similarly, the diacritic fora is not used beforeq. Any vowels with separate closed syllable diacritics have an inherent value of/-ʔ/ when not used with a succeeding consonant.

• [t͡ɕ] and[t͡ɕʰ] allophones are influenced by Thai, whereas[d͡ʑ] is influenced by Malay.
• Aspirated consonants and/f/ only appear in loanwords (mostly from Thai).
• Phonetically,/-c/ and/-s/ is pronounced[-jʔ], and[-jh] (after back vowels and/a/) or[-h] (after front vowels), respectively, syllable-finally.
• /l/ becomes[l] after/i/,/ə/, otherwise[ɭ] in syllable-final positions (/ˈlihəl/[ˈliˑhəl] 'neck' vs./ˈbumɔl/[ˈbuˑmɔɭ] 'doctor').
• /ər/ iscompensatorily lengthened to phonetically long[əə]. In stressed positions, the vowel cluster fluctuates between[ɽ],[ər],[rə].
• The coda stop/k/ after a front vowel becomes[kx] (/ˈkamek/[ˈkaˑmekx] 'sheep').
• Syllable-initial stops/p/,/b/, with the same syllable containing a back vowel and coda/c/, are labialized to/pw/ and/bw/ respectively (/səˈboc/[səˈbwʊjʔ] 'to utter').

• /-j/ and/-w/ can be treated as a part of diphthongs or triphthongs.
• /-l/ only exists in the Phuket dialect.

Urak Lawoiʼ does not havetones, except in Thai loans. Words are usually stressed in penultimate syllable, except if the expected stress is placed on the pre-syllable (e.g. open syllables containing/ə/, but not/ər/) the stress moves into the next syllable. Urak Lawoiʼ also has global intonation — for instance, interrogative sentences have rising intonation and negative sentences have lower-pitch intonation.

• Malayic languages
• Languages of Thailand

• Pages containing links to subscription-only content
• Language articles citing Ethnologue 18
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing Urak Lawoi'-language text
• Pages with Urak Lawoi' IPA
• Pages with plain IPA