Talk:Bai language

Latest comment: 1 year ago by Kcx36 in topic Latin script

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment edit

  This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 September 2019 and 31 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kylee Jenner.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 15:13, 16 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

Creating article edit

I have created the article based on those at zh: and fr: and my own reading. I will continue to add information from these sources and others, and add references. I didn't know what to do about classification in the language box, since it is unknown exactly what langugae family it belongs to. Also, I don't know how to display multiple ISO classifications in the language box (there should be 3).

borrowed from "Chinese", not "Mandarin" edit

Many minority languages in Yunnan have borrowed extensively from Mandarin, both from the new official standard and from the local "Xi-nan Guan-hua" (south-western Mandarin) but the reason there are doubts about Bai's affinity are due to a significant number of words in its vocabulary which look very Chinese, but appear to resemble some kind of Chinese spoken at least 1000, and in some cases over 2000 years ago, when there was no "Mandarin". Given this situation, it would be less misleading, and just as clear, to use "Chinese" instead of "Mandarin".Jakob37 00:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)Reply


Some Bai scholars actually proposed a new Sino-Bai group within Sino-Tibetian Family. Consider the fact that the supposedly Classical Chinese loanwords are very ancient (Autumn-Spring Period, 770 - circa 400 BCE), and Yuannan is a long way from Northern China (Shaanxi, Shanxi, Shangdong, Hebei and Henan), this is a very interesting proposals.

Karolus 2007/2/6

Some mysterious ancient migration may have been more along the western edge: ancient dictionaries designate a western dialect's xen instead of t'en as the word for "sky", just like in Bai. And don't forget that the Chengdu valley, north of Bai territory, was settled quite early by the Chinese. Jakob37 (talk) 00:59, 29 November 2010 (UTC)Reply

Dead link edit

The external link seems to be dead--TheChampionMan1234 07:04, 21 November 2012 (UTC)Reply


Student Editing edit

Hello, I'm a student in a course called ANTH 473 Living languages and I am going to add some information on history, statistics on the Bai Language and the major political influences. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kylee Jenner (talkcontribs) 03:54, 12 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

This posted was edited with the help of my instructor, CESchreyer (talk) 20:03, 12 November 2019 (UTC)CESchreyerReply

Nasal v? edit

All but u, ɑo and iɑo have contrasting nasalized variants. Including v? [ṽ̩]? That sounds a bit unusual, not found in any other language. Are you sure this is accurate? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Victionarier (talkcontribs) 23:46, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

In the thesis of same author (Wiersma), there is a table of co-occurrences of initials and finals that explicitly lists instances of ṽ̩. The glossary has numerous examples, including tṽ̩˥˥ 'east' and kṽ̩˥˥ 'river'. Kanguole 07:29, 7 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Latin script edit

The Latin script is called "zh:拼音白文" (Pinyin Bai Script).Kcx36 (talk) 16:21, 13 January 2023 (UTC)Reply