Zhuang

Zhuang is the cover name for more than a dozen Tai languages spoken by the Zhuang people of Guangxi and neighbouring parts of Yunnan and Guangdong. The varieties do not form a single lineage: northern dialects run into Bouyei, while southern ones continue into the Nung, Tay and Caolan speech of northern Vietnam.

Their speakers are descended from Tai communities that stayed in southern China while the Southwestern Tai migrated towards Southeast Asia; linguists place the split no earlier than the Han conquest of Nanyue and founding of Jiaozhi in 112 BC and no later than the sixth century. Chinese-speaking dynasties left many Chinese loanwords in the vocabulary.

For over a thousand years Zhuang was written in Sawndip, a script built from Chinese characters, used above all to copy songs and verse; an older pictographic proto-writing called Sawgoek may have preceded it.