Amis language should not be confused with Amish language.
| Amis | |
| Nativename: | 'Amis or Pangcah |
| Pronunciation: | pronounced as /[paŋt͡saʜ]/ |
| States: | Taiwan |
| Ethnicity: | Amis (2014)[1] |
| Date: | 2015 |
| Ref: | e26 |
| Familycolor: | Austronesian |
| Fam2: | East Formosan |
| Fam3: | Amis–Sakizaya |
| Script: | Latin script |
| Iso3: | ami |
| Glotto: | amis1246 |
| Glottorefname: | Amis |
| Map: | Formosan languages 2008.png |
| Mapcaption: | Distribution of Amis language (purple) |
| Map2: | Lang Status 80-VU.svg |
| Notice: | IPA |
Amis (Sowal no 'Amis or Pangcah) is a Formosan language of the Amis (or Ami), an indigenous people living along the east coast of Taiwan. Currently the largest of the Formosan languages, it is spoken from Hualien in the north to Taitung in the south, with another population in the Hengchun Peninsula near the southern end of the island, though the northern varieties are considered to be separate languages.
Government services in counties where many Amis people live in Taiwan, such as the Hualien and Taitung railway stations, broadcast in Amis alongside Mandarin. However, few Amis under the age of 20 in 1995 spoke the language. It is not known how many of the 200,000 ethnic Amis speak the language, but overall a third of the aboriginal Taiwanese population does.
Amis is a dialect cluster. There are five dialects: Southern Amis, Tavalong-Vataan, Central Amis, Chengkung-Kwangshan, and Northern Amis (Nanshi Amis, which includes Nataoran).
Sakizaya is a moribund language spoken among the northernmost ethnic Amis but is mutually unintelligible with the Northern Amis dialect.
The following discussion covers the central dialect of Amis.
| Glottal | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ ⟨n⟩ | pronounced as /link/ (ng) | |||||
| Plosives and affricate | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ ⟨t⟩ | pronounced as /link/ (c) | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ (ʼ) | pronounced as /link/ (^) | ||
| Fricatives | pronounced as /link/ (f) | pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ (d) | pronounced as /link/ (s) | (pronounced as /link/) (g) | pronounced as /link/ (h) | |||
| Trill | pronounced as /link/ (r) | |||||||
| Lateral flap | pronounced as /link/ (l) | |||||||
| Approximants | pronounced as /link/ (w) | pronounced as /link/ (y) |
The epiglottal consonants have proven difficult to describe, with some sources describing them as pharyngeal or even uvular as opposed to epiglottal. It's unclear if pronounced as /[h]/ is a separate phoneme from pronounced as /[ʜ]/ or if it's just an allophone of it. The voiceless pharyngeal fricative pronounced as /[ħ]/ is a word-final allophone of pronounced as //ʜ//.
The voiceless plosives pronounced as //p t k ʡ// and the affricate pronounced as //t͡s// are released in clusters, so that cecay "one" is pronounced pronounced as /[t͡sᵊt͡saj]/; as is pronounced as //s//: sepat "four" is pronounced as /[sᵊpatʰ]/. The glottal stop is an exception, frequently having no audible release in final position. The voiced fricatives, pronounced as //v ɮ ɣ// (the latter found only in loanwords) are devoiced to pronounced as /[f ɬ x]/ in utterance-final and sometimes initial position. pronounced as //ɮ// may be interdental or post-dental. The sibilants, pronounced as //t͡s s//, are optionally palatalized (pronounced as /[t͡ɕ ɕ]/) before pronounced as //i//. pronounced as //j// does not occur in word-initial position. pronounced as //ɺ// is often post-alveolar, and in final position it is released: pronounced as /[ʡuʡuɺ̠ᵊ]/ "fog".
pronounced as //ɮ// shows dramatic dialectal variation. In Fengbin, a town in the center of Amis territory, it is pronounced as a central dental fricative, pronounced as /[ð]/, whereas in the town of Kangko, only 15km (09miles) away, it is a lateral pronounced as /[ɮ̪]/. In Northern Amis, it is a plosive pronounced as /[d̪]/, which may be laxed to pronounced as /[ð]/ intervocalically. The epiglottals are also reported to have different pronunciations in the north, but the descriptions are contradictory. In Central Amis, pronounced as //ʜ// is always voiceless and pronounced as //ʡ// is often accompanied by vibrations that suggest it involves an epiglottal trill pronounced as /link/. Edmondson and Elsing report that these are true epiglottals initially and medially, but in utterance-final position they are epiglotto–pharyngeal.
Sakizaya, considered to be a separate language, contrasts a voiced pronounced as //z// with voiceless pronounced as //s//.
In the practical orthography, pronounced as //ts// is written, pronounced as //j//, pronounced as //ʡ//, pronounced as //ʔ//, pronounced as //ɮ//, pronounced as //ŋ//, and pronounced as //ʜ// .
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Mid | (pronounced as /link/) | |||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ |
Amis has three common vowels, pronounced as //i a u//. Despite the fact that a great deal of latitude is afforded by only needing to distinguish three vowels, Amis vowels stay close to their cardinal values, though there is more movement of pronounced as //a// and pronounced as //u// toward each other (tending to the pronounced as /[o]/ range) than there is in front-vowel space (in the pronounced as /[e]/ range).
A voiceless epenthetic schwa optionally breaks up consonant clusters, as noted above. However, there are a small number of words where a short schwa (written e) may be phonemic. However, no contrast involving the schwa is known, and if it is also epenthetic, then Amis has words with no phonemic vowels at all. Examples of this e are malmes "sad", pronounced pronounced as /[maɺə̆mːə̆s]/, and ’nem "six", pronounced pronounced as /[ʡnə̆m]/ or pronounced as /[ʡə̆nə̆m]/.
Stress regularly falls on the final syllable.
| cecay | one | isa | sakey | isa | maysa | siji | hiji | satu | |
| tosa | two | dalawa | dua | adwa | dua | loro | dua | dua | |
| tolo | three | tatlo | talo | atlo | tallo | telu | tilu | tiga | |
| sepat | four | apat | apat | apat | uppat | papat | opat | empat | |
| lima | five | lima | lima | lima | lima | lima | lima | lima | |
| 'enem | six | anim | anem | anam | inem | enem | genep | enam | |
| pito | seven | pito | pito | pitu/pito | pito | pitu | tujuh | tujuh | |
| falo | eight | walo | walo | walu/walo | walo | wolu | dalapan | delapan | |
| siwa | nine | siyam | siyam | siam | siam | sanga | salapan | sembilan | |
| polo' | ten | sampu | samplo | apulu/apulo | sangapulo | sepuluh | sapuluh | sepuluh |
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights translated into Pangcah:
Verbs in the Amis language have some inflections including existential clause, active voice, passive voice, disposal sentence, imperative mood, optative mood, and prohibitive mood.
Cases are marked by case particles.
| Neutral | Nominative | Accusative | Genitive | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common | o/u | ko | to | no | |
| Personal (singular) | ci | ci | ci ... an | ni | |
| Personal (plural) | ca | ca | ca ... an | na |
There are two word orders in Amis called "General" Word Order and "Special" Word Order.
Below are some examples of Amis sentence:
Sing ’Olam (2011:300–301) lists the following Amis names for villages and towns in Hualien County and Taitung County of eastern Taiwan.