Ugong language

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Ugong
Spoken in:	Western Thailand
Total speakers:	80 (2000 David Bradley)[1]
Language family:	Sino-Tibetan  Tibeto-Burman   Lolo-Burmese    Loloish     Southern Loloish      Ugong
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	sit
ISO 639-3:	ugo
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Ugong language (also 'Ugong, Gong, Lawa, or Ugawng) is an endangered language of Western Thailand, spoken in isolated pockets in Kanchanaburi, Uthai Thani, and Suphanburi provinces. The ethnic group was first known to Westerners in the 1920s, when the language was already considered in severe decline. In the 1970s, a linguist began working on the language in the several areas where it was still used, by which time it as already extinct in two of the locations given by the surveyor 50 years earlier. The people were then forced from two of these villages when the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand built dams over the Kwae Yai and Khwae Noi River. Because of the displacement of the people of an already declining language, the language is considered especially vulnerable to extinction. The last children speakers were in the 1970s, and the children now speak Thai as their first language.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine. Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Page 10.

[edit] Further reading

• Bradley, David. "The Disappearance of the Ugong in Thailand", in Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death, Nancy C. Dorian, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp 33-40