User:Samaraghali/Tsat language

Tsat, also known as Utsat, Utset, Hainan Cham, and Huíhuī, is an endangered language spoken by less than 4,000 native speakers worldwide, and was first identified roughly two thousand years ago. This language is spoken mainly by the Hainan Cham people who comprise small Muslim communities in the Yanglan township within Sanya, Hainan, China in the villages of Huihui and Huixin. Despite engaging in peaceful interaction with surrounding groups, the Hainan Cham remain a closed community, their customs restricting marriage with non-Muslims. Because of this, those residing in Huihui and Huixin have kept their language over time, while those living outside these communities have lost it. Tsat is a member of the Malayo-Polynesian group within the Austronesian language family, and is one of the Chamic languages that originated on the coast of present-day south Vietnam. Due to contact with multiple neighboring languages, Tsat has developed from an atonal language into a fully tonal language.

Classification
Tsat is a part of the Chamic subset of Austronesian languages, the language once found on the coast of Hainan Island and Northern Cham, and now found near Sanya City. It falls under the umbrella of Malayo-Chamic languages which pairs both Chamic and Malayic languages together, this group created because of a perceived special relationship between the two language clusters, although this has been criticized as a grouping based on superficial similarities. Rather than geographic distributions, the Malayo-Chamic languages are categorized according to shared historical innovations, though the subgroups are still correlated geographically. Within Malayo-Chamic, we can further narrow Tsat's place in this language family tree to the subgroup of Proto-Chamic, Highlands Chamic languages, and even further into Northern Cham. Genetically, Tsat is closely related to Northern Roglai, a Chamic language of Vietnam. The Hainan Cham and the Northern Roglai once spoke the same northern Cham dialect, but the two languages have distinct phonologies and syntaxes. In this sense, Tsat is more similar to the Chinese dialects in neighboring regions than to Northern Roglai. Nearly all adults that speak the language of Tsat also speak at least one Chinese dialect, the most commonly spoken Chinese dialects being Taiwanese and Cantonese due to the widespread use of these dialects in business, and Mandarin due to its usage in schooling, government, and interregional communications.[4]

Origins of Chamic languages
The language of Tsat originated from Cham, the oldest corroborated Austronesian language. Cham emerged roughly two thousand years ago in Southeast Asia with the arrival of Austronesian travelers, who settled on the coast. With this came the formation of Champa, a once politically-dominant kingdom located on the coast of central and southern Vietnam, populated by Chamic speakers. These Austronesian settlers originally spoke a disyllabic, non tonal language, contrary to the structure of the language as it exists in modern times. The linguistic reconstruction of Proto-Chamic, the language from which all modern Chamic languages are derived, concluded that Chamic languages possess similar properties to the language of these more recent Austronesian immigrants rather than the language of the original Austronesian immigrants who came to the mainland six to eight thousand years prior. In Champa, Chamic speakers had close interactions with Mon-Khmer speakers, marking the beginning of contact-influenced linguistic shifts in Chamic languages. They remained in contact even with the loss of Champa's northern capital in 982, and its eventual downfall in 1486. Chamic speakers were displaced after these events to different regions including the Vietnam highlands, Hainan, and Cambodia. Those in the highlands were able to maintain contact with the Mon-Khmer, while those who fled to Hainan were influenced by Hainanese varieties.

Throughout the last two thousand years, Chamic has developed to include characteristics that are not typical of Austronesian languages, and this occurred through internal restructuring as well as contact with surrounding groups. From the influence of the languages of Mon-Khmer and Hainanese, Chamic language underwent multiple shifts characteristic of Southeast Asian languages, including a switch from disyllabic to monosyllabic, the inclusion of glottalized consonants, the expansion of vowel contrasts, the loss of finals, and the development of tone systems. Due to close contact with Mon-Khmer, borrowed words from the language have been found in Chamic languages. Chamic and Mon-Khmer speakers that moved into the highlands of Vietnam came across the aforementioned linguistic shifts while speakers that remained coastal experienced assimilation to Vietnamese culture. The language was lost by those who culturally adjusted to the coastal civilization.

While some Chamic speakers moved to the Vietnam highlands, others arrived to Hainan in the year 986, where they were met with a multitude of different languages, including the Chinese Southern Min Hainanese dialect, the Hlai language, an early Cantonese dialect, a dialect of Southwest Mandarin, a Min dialect, and the Mandarin of the schools and government. More particularly, Southwest Mandarin, also known as a variety of military speech, has had a significant impact on Tsat's phonology, grammar, and lexicon. Here, tonality and monoysllabicity were developed and integrated into the language of Tsat due to the influence of contact. Hainan Cham people speak many tonal languages of Hainan island, and this likely contributed to the development of Tsat's fully tonal system. As for the transition into monoysllabicity, disyllabic words within Tsat eventually all were broken down into monosyllabic by reducing vowels and dropping syllables.

In more modern times, there has been an exodus of Chamic speakers from Vietnam due to the consequences of the Vietnam war, and the refugees from this conflict can be found in multiple regions including, but not limited to: Malaysia, Hong Kong, France, the United States, and Australia. Specifically pertaining to the Hainan Cham people living in Hainan, the Tsat language has been maintained in terms of vocabulary, but the structure of the language more closely resembles standard Mandarin. These periods of displacement scattering Chamic speakers throughout the region, and the world, have expedited the endangerment of the Tsat language.

Hainan Cham
Tsat is spoken by the Hainan Cham people in small coastal Muslim communities within Hainan. Most are located in the villages of Huihui and Huixin. Almost all speakers of Tsat can also speak Hainanese, a common local language, as well as other local languages. The adults within Hainan possess advanced literacy skills in Chinese, and most speak many dialects of Chinese. In addition, some Hainan Cham adults speak Li, and Sanya City contains some speakers of Mandarin Chinese as well as Cantonese. In the villages of Huihui and Huixin, young Hainan Cham learn Tsat as their fist language, learn Mandarin in school, then tend to pick up Hainanese Chinese. Increasingly, although the villagers speak Tsat fluently, Chinese is becoming dominant due to its widespread use as a common language between Hainan Cham and mainlanders, its use in the classroom, in business, and in government. The practical use of Chinese strengthens the prevalence and life of the language itself. However, the Hainan Cham are true to their identity and loyal to their language of Tsat, partially due to their commitment to and obedience of their Islamic religion. They are friendly to those outside of their group, but the Hainan Cham remain ethnically distinct, namely due to their customs which prohibit marriage with those who are not Muslim. They are close with one another as well as other Muslims in the nation, including regions like Guangzhou or Canton, and northern China. In addition to this, they belong to their own independent communities and live separately from the non-Cham. The tight-knit aspect of Hainan Cham communities in Huihui and Huixin is a contributing factor to the preservation of the Tsat language. Lastly, the Hainan Cham are recognized as "Hui," the Chinese word for Muslims. All Muslims in the country are referred to as "Hui," but there is no linguistic connection between the Hainan Cham and other Muslims in the region.

Geographic Distribution
Today, the language of Tsat is spoken on the island of Hainan in China near Sanya City. Roughly 4,131 Hainan Cham people live in the villages of Huihui and Huixin within this location, and around 3,849 still speak Tsat as of 1982.

Sound and Phonology
Tsat has been restructured in multiple ways as a result of external contact; the once sesquisyllabic, atonal language has transformed into a monosyllabic, fully tonal language. In Tsat syllables, the initial has a single consonant, while the vowel system includes seven simple vowels, nine diphthongs, and three triphthongs. The language contains 19 consonants, including stops, fricatives, nasals, an affricate, and a lateral. The Tsat language has also experienced the addition of new phonemes due to the influence of local Hainan languages. Other than this, Tsat has kept all Chamic final stops as glottal stops, one of the sources listed as borrowing from other languages.

Tonogenesis
Tsat, a previously atonal language, has transformed into the only fully tonal Chamic language through internal change and contact with other languages. The language contains five tones within its system: three level tones, one rising tone, and one falling tone. Zhao tone numbers are utilized to label the tones, ranging from numbers 1-5, and illustrating relatively how high the pitch of a tone is. The number 5 indicates a high pitch, 3 is in the middle, and 1 is low-pitched. When expressing pitch, two numbers are used to indicate the starting and ending pitch of a tone, the first number indicating the pitch of the tone in the beginning, and the second number expressing the ending pitch. As an example, 33 represents a middle-pitched, level tone that remains middle-pitched. In general, if the two numbers are the same, the tone will be level in pitch. If the second number is greater than the first, the tone rises, and conversely, if the first number is higher than the second, the tone falls in pitch. Examples of this can be found in the table below. In addition, high-pitched tones are set to be much higher than all other tones, as the middle and low tones are closer to one another in pitch. Extremely high pitches, such as 55, may include a falsetto component.

Grammar
Tsat has a basic SVO (subject-verb-object) word order, like other Chamic languages and Chinese. Tsat has undergone syntax restructuring due to the impact of Mandarin on the language, shifting the order of head and modifier in dependent genitives, adjectives, demonstratives, relative clauses, and comparative structures. Other than this, grammaticalized morphemes and their syntaxes have been borrowed from Mandarin. For instance, adverbs that Tsat borrowed from Mandarin were absorbed along with constraints of their usage, and whether or not the adverbs can be placed pre-head or post-head.

Verbs
In a sentence where a verb is applied to multiple objects, the verb tends to be repeated with every object, though this seems to be a stylistic choice rather than a grammatical requirement. Other than this, verb strings within sentence structure of Tsat may exist chronologically, meaning a sentence may be structured as a chronological sequence of events. On the other hand, serial verbs are constructed more uniquely. Serial verb constructions within Tsat contain a string of verbs that act as one single predicate, and describes the message of this verb-filled sentence as one event. Lastly, Tsat contains directionals that originated from the basic verbs depicting motion.

Adverbs and adverbials
Slightly modifying to fit Tsat adverbs and adverbials to fit into the English definition, it can be said that adverbs and adverbials in Tsat modify verb phrases, adjective phrases, and other adverbial phrases. Adverbs that modify verbs usually describe time, place, manner, frequency, direction, and aspect, while adverbs that modify adjectives and other adverbs are known as degree adverbials, which show an increased degree, the equivalent English words being "very" or "extremely."

Pronouns
A pronoun in Tsat can stand alone as a subject, object, or object of a preposition. Personal pronouns are used to describe humans, and are broken up into the categories of single, dual, and plural. Conversely, classifiers are used to describe non-humans. While pronouns in Tsat were mostly inherited from Proto-Chamic, outside influences are also evident, though the exact sources are unknown.

Vocabulary/Lexis
Tsat has developed and undergone significant change in part as a result of contact with surrounding languages and dialects. In its earlier stages, Tsat borrowed vocabulary from Mon-Khmer languages, the languages from which most of Tsat's borrowed kinship terminology is derived from. The suffixes to depict someone as male or female, -kaj33 or -maj33, respectively, come from Proto-Chamic as well as Austronesian vocabularies.

More currently, close contact between Tsat and a Mandarin dialect spoken in Sanya has resulted in a considerable number of loans from the dialect. From Chinese, Tsat has borrowed adjectives, superlative markers, pronouns, prepositions, and locative nouns. A significant percentage of Tsat lexical items originated from Chinese in replacement of the original Austronesian vocabulary.