Cuoi language

Cuói
	Hung (hnu); Thổ (tou)
Native to	Vietnam, Laos
Ethnicity	Thổ
Native speakers	71,000 (1999 census)[1]
Language family	Austroasiatic Vietic Cuói; ;
Dialects	Cuối Chăm; Làng Lỡ; Pong (Toum, Liha, Phong);
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either:; hnu – Hung; tou – Thô
Glottolog	cuoi1242[2]
Linguasphere	46-EAD-a

Cuói, known as Thổ in Vietnam and as Hung in Laos,[3] is a dialect cluster spoken by around 70,000 Thổ people in Vietnam and a couple thousand in Laos, mainly in the provinces of Bolikhamsai and Khammouane.

Phonology

Làng Lỡ dialect

Consonants

The consonant inventory of the Làng Lỡ dialect, as cited by Michel Ferlus:[4]

Initial consonants of Cuối Làng Lỡ
		Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		[m]		[n]		[ɲ]	[ŋ]
Stop	tenuis	[p]		[t]	[ʈ]	[c]	[k]	[ʔ]
	glottalized	[ɓ]		[ɗ]		[ˀɟ]
	aspirated			[tʰ]			[kʰ]
Fricative	voiceless	[f]		[s]	[ʂ]			[h]
	voiced	[β]	[v]	[ð]			[ɣ]
	glottalized			[ˀð]
Approximant				[l]	[ɽ ~ ʐ]	[j]

[ʈ] is found in Vietnamese loanwords with initial /ʈ/ (orthographic [tr])
[β ð ɣ ˀð] originate in the borrowing of segments from a variety of Vietnamese that existed several centuries ago.

Vowels

Monothongs of Cuối Làng Lỡ
	Front	Central	Back
Close	[i]	[ɨ]	[u]
Close-mid/ Mid	[e]	[ə]	[o]
Open-mid/ Open	[ɛ]	[ʌ̆] [ă] [a]	[ɔ]


Diphthongs of Cuối Làng Lỡ	iə	ɨə	uə	eə	oə

Tones

There're eight tones in the Làng Lỡ. Tones 1 to 6 are found on sonorant-final syllables (a.k.a. ‘live’ syllables): syllables ending in a vowel, semi-vowel or nasal. Tones 7 and 8 are found on obstruent-final syllables (a.k.a. ‘stopped’ syllables), ending in -p -t -c -k.[4] This is a system comparable to that of Vietnamese.

Vocabulary

The data is from Cuoi Cham vocabulary recordings and the Mon-Khmer Etymological Dictionary.

English	Cuối Chăm	Làng Lỡ	Vietnamese
cloud	mʌl¹	mʌn¹	mây
rain	mɐː²	mɨə¹	mưa
wind	sɒː³	juə³	gió
thunder	kʰrʌm⁴	ʂəm⁴	sấm
earth, land	tʌt⁷	tʌt⁷	đất
cave	haːŋ¹	haːŋ¹	hang
deep	kʰruː²	ʂuː²	sâu
water	daːk⁷	daːk⁷	nước
river	kʰrɔŋ¹	ʂɔːŋ¹	sông
puddle	puŋ⁶	-	vũng
mud	puːl²	vuːn²	bùn
rock, stone	taː³	δaː³	đá
bark	pɒː⁵	ʂɔː⁵⁶	vỏ
dog	cɒː³	cɔː³	chó
cultivated field	rɔːŋ⁴	ʂɔːŋ⁴	ruộng
to go	tiː²	tiː²	đi
to have	kɒː³	kɔː³	có

gollark: That works too.

gollark: You could actually analyze, roughly, demand for items via krist logs, except KristQL is down.

gollark: Preprogram your shop with the prices and locations of other shops (or I guess have it communicate with others over some defined interface), and when it runs low have it try and buy more stock from elsewhere and send drones to collect.

gollark: Hmm. Drones can fly around other people's claims *and* suck up items...

gollark: Make a shop which buys and sells items in one more unified system, and which adjusts buy/sell prices automatically based on how much it has. Maybe it could even communicate with other people's stores to figure out demand for some products.

References

Hung at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Thô at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Cuoi". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
"The Vietic Branch". sealang.net.
Ferlus, Michel 2015, I.2