Rawang, Dulong and Anong are closely related dialects/languages
spoken on both sides of the China / Myanmar (Burma) border just south and east
of Tibet. They form a group within the Rung branch of Tibeto-Burman in
the Sino-Tibetan language family. Other members of the Rung branch include
rGyalrong, at least some of the Kiranti languages, Kham, Chepang, and the Western
Himalayan languages (Byansi, Rongpo, etc.; see LaPolla 2003a for the reasons for this subgrouping).
The variety known as Dulong (a Chinese approximation of T'rung, also sometimes written as Drung or Tarong)
is spoken in Gongshan county of Yunnan province, China. The speakers belong
to either what is known as the 'Dulong' nationality (pop. 5816 according
to the 1990 census), or to one part (roughly 6,000 people) of what is known
as the Nu nationality (those Nu who live along the upper reaches of the Nu River--the
part of the Salween within China). Another subgroup of the Nu people,
those who live along the lower reaches of the Nu river (in China), speak the
language known as 'Anung', which seems to be the same as, or closely related
to, the Kwinpang dialect of Rawang spoken in Myanmar.
Within Myanmar,
the people who speak what is now known as the Rawang (Rvwang) language (possibly up to
100,000 people) live in northern Kachin State, particularly in the Mae Hka ('Nmai
Hka) and Maeli Hka (Mali Hka) river valleys. (This language is often called "Nung" in the linguistic literature, following Barnard 1934.) The actual number of dialects
of Dulong and Rawang that exist and the relationships among them still need
to be worked out, but it seems there are at least seven major dialects: Mvtwang,
Wvdamkong, Longmi, Dvru (Ganung), Dulong, Tangsarr, and Kwinpang (Anung).
Within the Dulong dialect it is also possible to distinguish at least four subvarieties:
Northern Dulongjiang (1st Township), Central Dulongjiang (3rd Township), Southern
Dulongjiang (4th Township) and Nujiang Dulong. The differences among these
subvarieties are rather minor, and so all are mutually intelligible. There
is also a high degree of mutual intelligibility among all of the dialects of
Dulong and Rawang. The dialect picture is actually not neatly divided
between Chinese and Myanmar dialects, as Central Dulongjiang Dulong and Dvru
are both very conservative phonologically, while the Northern Dulongjiang, Southern
Dulongjiang and Nujiang varieties of Dulong share phonological innovations with
other dialects in Myanmar.
The Mvtwang (Mvt River) dialect is considered
the most central of those dialects in Myanmar and so has become something of
a standard for writing and intergroup communication, particularly as the system
of writing using the roman alphabet and a few other symbols developed by the
American missionary Robert H. Morse (see Morse 1963 for an analysis of
Mvtwang phonology) based on this dialect is in common use among the Rawang people.
In this writing system, most letters represent the standard pronunciations of
English, except that i = [i], v = [schwa], a = [back a], = [high back unrounded
vowel], q = [glottal stop], and c = [s] or [ts] (free variation; historically
[ts]). Tones are marked as follows: high tone: acute accent, mid tone:
macron, low tone: grave accent. All syllables that end in a stop consonant
(-p, -t, -glottal stop, -k) are in the high tone. Open syllables without
a tone mark are unstressed. A colon marks non-basic long vowels.
This writing system is also being adapted for use with the Dulong dialects,
but until now there is no recognized standard for writing Dulong.
A list of references (some with downloadable papers) is
given under the button "Bibliography and papers". See Sun 1988, 2000 for brief descriptions
of the Anung language. See Lo 1945, Sun 1982, Liu 1988, Dai et al.
1991, and LaPolla 1995b, 2003b for descriptions of Dulong dialects, and Morse
1965 and LaPolla 2000 for partial descriptions of the Mvtwang dialect. LaPolla 2001 and LaPolla & Poa 2001 are collections of texts from Dulong and Rawang respectively.
Barnard 1934 is a description of the Wvdamkong dialect of Rawang, though
does not mark tones or glottal stops, and the structures presented there
seem to have been influenced by the working language (Jinghpaw) used for
the elicitation.
Last modified: March 17, 2003