Zhuang language: Spelling

The present day Zhuang language is written in the roman alphabet. The letters and the symbols, which is used for the spelling of written Zhuang are the same as that of the English language. When Zhuang is used on  a computer, special fonts are not needed.
In 26 characters of alphabet, 6 are used for vowel characters, 15 are used for consonant characters. 4 are used for tone marks. The last 1 is used both for a consonant character and a tone mark.

6 vowel characters : a e i o u w
15 consonant characters : b c d f g k l m n p r s t v y
4 tone marks : j q x z
The letter which combines one consonant character and a tone mark : h

The “the tone mark” will be explained later

These symbols are generally used in the same way as English.
“  .  ?  !  ;  :  “ ” ‘ ’ -  ( )  … ”
But the following three are particular to Zhuang:

1. The use of “，” and “、”.
This is common with Chinese. The symbol “,” is used when it divides phrases, and the symbol “、” is used when it enumerates words.

2. The use of  ” ’ “.
When there is a syllable that begins with a vowel in the word that consists of more than one syllable.
seng + eiq → seng’eiq
(To distinguish “sen + geiq → sengeiq “)

3. When writing a book or a song name, it is written in capital letters.

The present day Zhuang language is written in the roman alphabet. Before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Zhuang people had their own writing system. It was called “Fang-gui-Zhuang-zi”. Similar to the Vietnamese “Chunom”characters made from Chinese characters. Some people say that Chunom was made with  reference to Fang-gui-Zhuang-zi as both resemble each other. The letter system, which was derived from Chinese characters: Hiragana, Katakana, Kitay, Xixia, Nuzhen, and Chunom are all well known. However,  Fang-gui-Zhuang-zi is older than any of those characters. It seems that Zhuang existed already in the 8th century (the Tang dynasty in China), so it is much older than Japanese Hiragana and Katakana. The Zhuang people wrote literary works such as “Liu San Jie “, “Liang-shan-po and Zhu-ying-tai ” over 1,000 years, using this letter system.
However, Fang-gui-Zhuang-zi was elliminated in 1957 because the spelling was very complicated and the acquisition was too difficult.

Tags: lessons