Urak Lawoiʼ language

Urak Lawoiʼ or Urak Lawoc (Urak Lawoiʼ: อูรักลาโวยจ, ) is a Malayic language spoken in southern Thailand.

The Orang (Suku) Laut who live between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula speak divergent Malayic lects, which bear some intriguing connections to various Sumatran Malay varieties.

Vowels

 * In closed syllables, some vowels change their quality:
 * becomes (  'space').
 * becomes (  'return').
 * becomes (  'stomach').
 * Epenthetic and  are added after high vowels  respectively ( 'light',  'to throw away').
 * Vowels are somewhat allophonically lengthened in stressed open syllables.
 * Vowels other than are slightly nasalized after nasal consonants. If the following syllable has  as the onset, this onset is also nasalized (  'to cry',   'body, self').

Notes: In the Thai script, the left column represents diacritics for open syllables, while the right one for closed syllables. For syllables with vowel ö, before consonants k, m, n, ng, p, and t, the vowel is not written. Similarly, the diacritic for a is not used before q. Any vowels with separate closed syllable diacritics have an inherent value of when not used with a succeeding consonant.

Consonants

 * and allophones are influenced by Thai, whereas  is influenced by Malay.
 * Aspirated consonants and only appear in loanwords (mostly from Thai).
 * Phonetically, and  is pronounced, and  (after back vowels and ) or  (after front vowels), respectively, syllable-finally.
 * becomes after, otherwise  in syllable-final positions (  'space' vs.   'doctor').
 * is compensatorily lengthened to phonetically long . In stressed positions, the vowel cluster fluctuates between.
 * The coda stop after a front vowel becomes  (  'sheep').
 * Syllable-initial stops, with the same syllable containing a back vowel and coda , are labialized to and  respectively (  'to utter').


 * and can be treated as a part of diphthongs or triphthongs.
 * only exists in the Phuket dialect.

Stress and intonation
Urak Lawoiʼ does not have tones, 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, but not ) 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.