Jizhao language


Jizhao is an unclassified Kra-Dai language spoken in Jizhao Village 吉兆村, Tanba Town 覃巴镇, Wuchuan, Guangdong. It may be most closely related to Be. In Wuchuan, Jizhao is locally referred to as Haihua 海话, which is the term used elsewhere in Leizhou 雷州, Xuwen 徐闻, and Maoming 茂名 to refer to the local Minnan Chinese dialect of Leizhou.
The speakers are being subsumed under "Han Chinese" nationality in census

Demographics

Jizhao is a highly endangered language that only has speakers above the age of 60. Within Jizhao Administrative Village 吉兆行政村, it is spoken in the hamlets of Jizhao 吉兆, Meilou 梅楼, and Hong 洪村 villages. All of Jizhao speakers are being counted as part of Han nationality.
As of 2017, there are fewer than 100 speakers of Jizhao, most of whom are above the age of 70.

Classification

Shao & Meng observe some similarities with the Be language of northern Hainan, but provisionally consider Jizhao to be unclassified within the Kam-Tai branch. Jizhao has many loanwords from Yue Chinese and Minnan Chinese.
Weera Ostapirat, analyzing data from Zhang, notes that Be and Jizhao share many lexical similarities and sound correspondences, and that Jizhao may be a remnant Be-related language on the Chinese mainland.
In a 100-item Swadesh list, Shao found lexical matches between Jizhao and the following languages.
Jizhao has 6 tones.
  1. 21
  2. 31
  3. 32
  4. 33
  5. 55
  6. 45
Jizhao, like Hlai, also has the implosive consonants /ɓ/ and /ɗ/.