| Jru' | |
|---|---|
| Jruʔ, ຈຼ໌ຣູະ | |
| Native to | Laos |
Native speakers | 28,000 (2007)[1] |
| Lao script,Khom script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | lbo |
| Glottolog | lave1248 |
Jru' (IPA:[ɟruʔ]) is aMon–Khmer language of theBahnaric branch spoken in southern Laos.[2] It is also known as "Loven", "Laven" or "Boloven" from theLaotian exonymLaven orLoven, which is derived from theKhmer name for theBoloven Plateau. The Jru' people engage in coffee andcardamom cultivation, as well as other agricultural activities.
Jru' is a variety ofLaven which belongs to the Western branch of the Bahnaric languages which also includes such languages asBrao.
Jru' is the native language of the Jru' people, ahill tribe indigenous to the isolated mountains inChampasak,Sekong andAttapeu Provinces in the central part of extreme southern Laos.[2] The variety described here is the most-studied variety that is spoken inPaksong District, Champasak in the towns ofPaksong,Houeikong,Tateng, and various nearby villages.
The sounds and syllable structure of Jru' are typical of the West Bahnaric languages in general. Words are mostly monosyllabic although a few words haveminor pre-syllables, retaining the classic Mon-Khmer sesquisyllabic structure. Theregister contrast seen in other Mon-Khmer languages has not been found in Jru' and, in contrast to the surroundingprestige language, Lao, Jru' has not developed phonemictones.[2]
Similar to the other Mon-Khmer languages of the region, Jru' distinguishes five places of articulation in its consonant inventory and the stops can be either voiced, unvoiced or (unvoiced) aspirated. The consonants are given below in IPA as laid out by Jacq.[2]
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | Aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | |||
| Voiceless | p | t | c | k | ʔ | ||
| Voiced | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | |||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Fricative | s | h | |||||
| Approximant | w | l | r | j | |||
The vowels of Jru' inherited from Proto-Mon-Khmer show three vowel heights and three tongue positions, or amount of "backness". An innovation in which Jru' developed a rounding contrast in the open-mid back vowels, results in ten vowel positions. All ten also show a length contrast, giving a total of 20 monophthongs. Unlike other languages in the Southeast Asiansprachbund, the length contrast is not between short and long, but between "regular" and "extra short".[2]
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| extra short | regular | extra short | regular | extra short | regular | |
| Close | i | iː | ɨ | ɨː | u | uː |
| Close-mid | e | eː | o | oː | ||
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɛː | ə | əː | ʌ,ɔ | ʌː,ɔː |
| Open | a | aː | ||||
Jru' additionally has three diphthongs/ia/,/ɨə/, and/ua/. The diphthongs/ie/ and/uo/ are also found in certain environments as allophones of/i/ and/u/, respectively.[3]
The maximal monosyllable is represented as (C1)C2(R)V(C3) where C1 is any voiceless consonant, C2 is any consonant except one identical to C1 (or R if present), R is/r/ or/l/, V is any vowel or diphthong and C3 is any consonant except a voiced or aspirated stop. The components in parentheses are not present in all words.[2][3]
The maximal sesquisyllabic word structure is represented C1əC2(R)V(C3) where C1 is/p/,/k/ or/t/, C2 is/h/,/r/ or/l/, V is any vowel or diphthong and C3 is any consonant except a voiced or aspirated stop.[2][3]
As is the situation with most of the Mon-Khmer languages, Jru' has no indigenous writing system. However, at different points in history, various existing scripts includingQuốc ngữ andLao have been used or modified to transcribe the sounds of the language for study.[2] During theOng Keo Rebellion of the early 1900s, in which the Mon-Khmer hill tribes of the region joined together to resist French and Lao rule,Ong Kommandam, a speaker of the closely relatedAlak language, invented a complicated script calledKhom that was used for a time to write Jru'.[2][3][4]
Recently, linguist Pascale Jacq, with the help of native speakers, has devised an orthography based on the Lao script in an attempt to provide Jru' speakers a standardized method with which to write their language.[2] Jacq's orthography is currently being used to compile a Jru'-Lao-English-French dictionary.
| Official language | |||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indigenous languages |
| ||||||||||||||||||||
| Main foreign languages | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Sign languages | |||||||||||||||||||||
