The following displays the phonological features of the Wuming and northern dialects of Zhuang:
Consonants
Among other northern dialects of Zhuang, may be heard as a or sound. Absent consonant produces.
Vowels
only occurs in diphthong or triphthong sounds. Among other northern Zhuang dialects, // have shortened allophones of .
Tones
Standard Zhuang has six tones, reduced to two in checked syllables: The sentence Son mwngz hwnj max gvaq dah "Teach thee to climb on a horse to cross a river" is often used to help people remember the six tones. Tones for open syllables are written at end of syllables.
Orthography
Classification
Standard Zhuang is an artificial mixture of several Zhuang languages. The lexicon is based almost entirely on various Northern Zhuang dialects. The phonology is essentially that of Shuangqiao, with the addition of ny, ei, ou from Fuliang, both located in Wuming County. Zhang, along with other Chinese scholars, classifies Shuangqiao dialect as Northern Tai. Shuangqiao was chosen for the standard pronunciation in the 1950s because it was considered to be Northern Zhuang but with characteristics of Southern Zhuang.
Domains of use
Standard Zhuang is used most frequently in domains where written Zhuang was previously seldom used, such as newspapers, translations of communist literature and prose. It is one of the official languages of China that appears on bank notes; all Chinese laws must be published in it, and it is used for bilingual signs. Whilst used for adult literacy programs, it is currently only taught in a very small percent of primary and secondary schools in Zhuang-speaking areas. In less formal domains the traditional writing systemSawndip is more often used and for folk songs Sawndip remains the predominant genre with most standard Zhuang versions being based on Sawndip versions.
Official examination
In 2012 the first Zhuang Proficiency Test took place which 328 people took and 58% passed.
Differences from Wuming Zhuang
While Standard Zhuang is largely pronounced as Shuangqiao Wuming dialect, there is a degree of purposeful dialect mixture in vocabulary:
In 1957, the People's Republic of China introduced an alphabetical script for the newly standardized Zhuang language. The alphabet included a mixture of Latin, modified Cyrillic and IPA letters. A reform in 1982 replaced both the Cyrillic and IPA letters with Latin letters to facilitate printing and computer use. These alphabetical scripts are part of Standard Zhuang. The Old Zhuang script, Sawndip, is a Chinese character–based writing system, similar to Vietnamese chữ nôm. Some Sawndip logograms were borrowed directly from Chinese, while others were created from the existing components of Chinese characters. Sawndip has been used for over one thousand years for various Zhuang dialects. Unlike Chinese, Sawndip has never been standardized and authors may differ in their choices of characters or spelling and it is not currently part of the official writing system.
