Ruc | |
---|---|
Rục | |
Native to | Vietnam |
Ethnicity | Ruc |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | – |
Glottolog |
rucc1239 |
Rục is a Vietic language spoken by the Ruc people of Tuyên Hóa district, Quảng Bình province, Vietnam. Rục literally means 'underground spring', and is a critically endangered language spoken by a small ethnic group that practiced a hunter-gatherer lifestyle until the late 20th century. [1]
Ruc speakers were hunter-gatherers until the late 1970s, when they were relocated into sedentary villages by the Vietnamese government. The 1985 Soviet-Vietnamese Linguistic Expedition found that there were no more than 200 Ruc people. Half of the Ruc died from a cholera epidemic in the late 1980s. Today, the Ruc live together with the Sach in villages close to the Laotian border. [1] Ruc settlements include Yên Hợp and Phú Minh. [2]
Unlike Vietnamese, Rục allows for presyllables with a minor vowel, such as cakuː4 'bear' (cf. Vietnamese gấu). Rục is notable for preserving many prefixes that have been lost in Vietnamese, including prefixes (such as *k.-) in archaic Chinese loanwords that are crucial for the reconstruction of Old Chinese [3]