User:Yuwei Han

Dulong (simplified Chinese: 独龙语; traditional Chinese: 獨龍語; pinyin: Dúlóng) or Drung, Derung, Rawang, Trung, is a Tibeto-Burman language in China. Speakers of Dulong are generally in all domains and all ages with positive attitudes. They also use Burmese, Lisu, Mandarin Chinese. Dulong is closely related to the Rawang language of Myanmar (Burma). Although almost all ethnic Derung people speak the language to some degree, there are probably no monolingual Dulong speakers, with the possible exception of a few very elderly people.

Dulong is also called: Taron, Kiu, Qui, Kiutze, Qiuzi, Kiupa, Kiao, Metu, Melam, Tamalu, Tukiumu, Qiu, Nung, Nu-tzŭ.

Classification
Dulong belongs to Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Central Tibeto-Burman, and Nungish language family. The other two languages in the same family are Anong and Rawang.

History
Dulong/Rawang is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken on both sides of the China/Myanmar (Burma) border just south and east of Tibet. Within Myanmar, the people who speak the Dulong language (possibly up to 100,000 people) live in northern Kachin State, particularly along the Mae Hka ('Nmai Hka) and Mach Hka (Mali Hka) River valleys. In the past, they had been called 'Hkanung' or 'Nung', and have often been considered to be a subgroup of the Kachm (Jinghpaw). Around 2000, speakers of this language in Myanmar have begun a movement to use the name /rəwɑŋ/ (spelled 'Rvwang' in the Rawang orthographies) to represent all of its speakers. The speakers in China, though, continue to use the name 'Dulong'.

Geographic distribution
There are 14,000 (2,000 census) people speaking in two dialects: 8,500 in Nu River dialect, and 5,500 in Dulong River dialect. The locations of Dulong are Yunnan province (Gongshan Dulong-Nu autonomous county), Xizang Autonomous Region (Gongshan Dulong-Nu autonomous county west to Chayu (Zayü) county), Gongshang county, Bingzhongluo, and Tibet (Chayu county, Chawalong district). In the past, the Dulong River was known as the Kiu (Qiu) river, and the Dulong people were known as the Kiu (Qiu), Kiutze (Qiuzi), Kiupa, or Kiao.

Dialects/Varieties
Dulong has two dialects: Dulong River (Central Dulongjiang, Derung River, Northern Dulongjiang, Southern Dulongjiang), and Nu River (Nujiang Dulong). Dialects reportedly inherently intelligible (Thurgood and LaPolla 2003). Other possible dialect names are Melam, Metu, Tamalu, and Tukiumu.

Consonants
Dulong has twenty-four initial consonants at six points of articulation, plus the consonant clusters /pr, br, mr, kr, xr, gr, pl, bl, ml, kl, gl/ in initial position; only the consonants /p, t, ʔ, k, n, m, ŋ, r, l/ occur in final position.

Vowels
The Dulong vowels are /i, ε, ə, ɑ, ɔ, w, u/, and there are three diphthongs, /əi, ɑi, wi/, which only appear in open syllables.

Tones
Dulong has 3 tones: high level, high falling, and short falling. In Dulong language, the tone has the role of differentiating the meaning of a few words. In the record of more than 4000 words, there are about 8% words completely rely on tones to distinguish them.

Grammar
Words can be formed by prefixation, suffixation, or compounding. Word classes include nouns, defined by the ability to appear with a numeral classifier; verbs, defined by the ability to appear with negation and the person and tense marking; postpositions, which are enclitic to NPs, numerals, and classifiers. Adjectives are a subset of stative verbs for which reduplication means intensification or adverbialization rather than the perfective aspect (reduplication with nouns has a distributive meaning, ‘every’). Adjectives can be used as predicates or can appear nominalized in a copula clause.

Vocabulary/Lexis
Lexical similarity: 74% with Matwang dialect of Rawang.