section_path: Vocabulary and adaptation/Other languages
section_name: Other languages
paragraph_text: Other languages
  
  Several minority languages of South and Southwest China have been written with scripts using both borrowed and locally created characters. The most well-documented of these is the sawndip script for the Zhuang languages of Guangxi. While little is known about its early development, a tradition of vernacular Zhuang writing likely first emerged during the Tang dynasty (618–907). Modern scholarship on sawndip has described a network of regional writing traditions exhibiting both mutual influence and characteristic difference with one another. Like Vietnamese, some invented Zhuang characters are phonetic–phonetic compounds, though not primarily ones intended to describe consonant clusters. Despite the Chinese government encouraging its replacement with a Latin-based Zhuang alphabet, sawndip remains in use. Other non-Sinitic languages of China written with Chinese characters include Miao, Yao, Bouyei, Bai, and Hani. Each of these languages are now written with Latin-based alphabets in official contexts.