The
Bai language (Bai: ; ) is a language spoken in
China, primarily in
Yunnan province, by the
Bai people. The language has over a million speakers and is divided into three main
dialects. It is a
tonal language with eight tones and a rather rich set of
vowels. As is common among Southeast Asian languages, the vowels of Bai have a
phonemic opposition between
tense vowels and
lax vowels (creaky voice vs. normal voice). There exists a small amount of traditional literature written with Chinese characters, Bowen , as well as a number of recent publications printed with a recently standardized system of romanisation using the
Latin alphabet.