Zhuang

Zhuang is one of the 56 officially recognized ethnic groups of China, and Zhuang is recognized with official status at the provincial level in Guangxi. Linguistically part of the Tai branch of Tai-Kadai, Zhuang is actually refers to a cluster of languages, with the northern ones being closer to Bouyei in across the provincial line in Guizhou, and the southern ones being closer to the Tay language across the border in northern Vietnam. The Zhuang variety that the PRC government selected to be the basis of the official Zhuang language is that of Shuangqiao in Wuming County, which is a northern Zhuang variety.

The Bouyei-Zhuang-Tay-Nung cluster of languages belong to both Northern Tai (Bouyei and northern Zhuang) and Central Tai (southern Zhuang and Tay-Nung) branches. These languages are traditionally written in Sinographs (漢字), also known as Chinese characters, but nowadays romanization systems are the officially sanctioned writing systems, and use of Chinese characters has decreased, mainly being limited to informal usage. Chinese character usage has never been officially standardized in these languages, so usage of characters can vary from area to area and writer to writer, though in general, character usage seems to have been more consistent within Tay than the Zhuang varieties.

The romanization system for Standard Zhuang recognized in the PRC is a typical PRC Pinyin style romanization scheme, which reutilizes some of the principles of the Hanyu Pinyin in use for Standard Mandarin, but with many other features that will be unfamiliar to Hanyu Pinyin users, such as use of letters appended at the end of a syllable to indicate the tone, instead of the diacritic marks such as á and à. Lexxify Hub also has a Lexx Rom system romanization to help learners get used to pronouncing Zhuang; the Lexx Rom system on Lexxify Hub is made to be extremely consistent with the systems in place for other Tai languages such as Thai, Lao, and Shan.

Initials

Typical of Northern Zhuang, there are no aspirated plosive consonants, but there is a distinction between the unaspirated /p/ and the implosive /ɓ/, as well as unaspirated /t/ and implosive /ɗ/. /w/ in the Zhuang-speaking area can often vary in realization with [β] or [v].

Rimes

Plain Rimes

/ɐ/ and /aː/ contrast in both height and length, as in Cantonese.

Nasal Coda Rimes

Checked Coda Rimes

Tones