Rukai is a Formosan language of the Austronesian family spoken in twelve villages across Pingtung, Kaohsiung and Taitung counties in Taiwan, comprising six dialects, Budai, Labuan, Maga, Mantauran, Tanan and Tona, with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility. Linguist Paul Jen-kuei Li considers Rukai the first language to have split from Proto-Austronesian, with an estimated divergence date around 3,000 BC, and it is also notable as the only Formosan language without a focus system, a trait significant for reconstructing Proto-Austronesian grammar. About 10,500 native speakers, some of them monolingual, were documented in 2002, and UNESCO classifies the language as vulnerable.
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