The Zhuang languages (autonym: Vahcuengh (pre-1982: Vaƅcueŋƅ, Sawndip: 话壮), from vah 'language' and Cuengh 'Zhuang'; simplified Chinese: 壮语; traditional Chinese: 壯語; pinyin: Zhuàngyǔ) are any of various Tai languages used by the Zhuang people. Most speakers live in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region within the People's Republic of China, where Standard Zhuang is an official language. Across the provincial border in Guizhou, Bouyei has also been standardized. Over one million speakers also live in China's Yunnan province.
The sixteen ISO 639-3 registered Zhuang languages are not mutually intelligible without previous exposure on the part of speakers, and some of them are themselves multiple languages. There is a dialect continuum between Wuming and Bouyei, as well as between Zhuang and various (other) Nung languages such as Tày, Nùng, and San Chay of northern Vietnam. However, the Zhuang languages do not form a linguistic unit; any cladistic unit that includes the various varieties of Zhuang would include all the Tai languages.
Citing the fact that both the Zhuang and Thai peoples have the same exonym for the Vietnamese, kɛɛuA1, Jerold A. Edmondson of the University of Texas, Arlington posited that the split between Zhuang and the Southwest Tai languages happened no earlier than the founding of Jiaozhi (交址) in Vietnam in 112 BC, but no later than the 5th–6th century AD.
Read more about Zhuang Languages: Varieties, Writing Systems
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“Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.”
—J.G. (James Graham)