The Luish, Asakian, or Sak languages are a group of
Sino-Tibetan languages
Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 ...
belonging to the
Sal branch. They are spoken in Burma and Bangladesh, and consist of the
Sak,
Kadu, and
Ganan languages. In recent years, Luish languages have been influenced by
Burmese and
Chakma.
Although Luish languages are now widely scattered and spoken by relatively small populations, Luce (1985) suggests that the Luish languages were “once spread over the whole north of Burma, from
Manipur
Manipur () is a state in northeastern India with Imphal as its capital. It borders the Indian states of Assam to the west, Mizoram to the south, and Nagaland to the north and shares the international border with Myanmar, specifically t ...
perhaps to northern
Yunnan
Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...
.”
Matisoff (2013)
proposes the name ''Asakian'', since ''Lui'' or ''
Loi
Loi is the word in the Meitei language (Meiteilon) for the term " scheduled caste". The term ''Loi'' is given to the indigenous and aboriginal people of Manipur in northeast India who refused to adopt Hinduism or were semi-Hinduised when the n ...
'' were used by the
Meithei to refer to slaves. Although many speakers of Luish languages refer to themselves as ''Sak'', ''Cak'', or similar variations, speakers of Ganan and Mokhwang Kadu do not refer to themselves as ''Sak'' or ''Asak''.
Extinct languages
Matisoff (2013)
has demonstrated that the extinct
Andro,
Sengmai, and
Chairel languages of
Manipur
Manipur () is a state in northeastern India with Imphal as its capital. It borders the Indian states of Assam to the west, Mizoram to the south, and Nagaland to the north and shares the international border with Myanmar, specifically t ...
are also Luish languages.
Andro, Sengmai, and Chairel are extinct and known only from a glossary recorded in 1859, their speakers having switched to
Meitei.
There are also various unattested varieties of ''Lui'' or ''Loi'' ('serf') mentioned in nineteenth-century accounts that appear to be Luish varieties.
It is uncertain whether the extinct
Pyu language of central Myanmar is a Luish language.
Benedict (1972) and Shafer (1974) had classified the extinct
Taman language of northern Myanmar as part of the Luish branch, but it has since been shown by Keisuke Huziwara (2016) to be a non-Luish language, possibly a separate branch of Tibeto-Burman.
Classification
Matisoff (2013),
citing Huziwara (2012),
provides the following
Stammbaum classification for the Asakian (Luish) branch.
;Asakian
*
Cak
**Cak
**Sak
*
Chairel
*
Loi
Loi is the word in the Meitei language (Meiteilon) for the term " scheduled caste". The term ''Loi'' is given to the indigenous and aboriginal people of Manipur in northeast India who refused to adopt Hinduism or were semi-Hinduised when the n ...
(Chakpa)
**
Sengmai
**
Andro
*Kadu
**
Ganan
**
Kadu
Huziwara (2020) merges Sengmai, Andro, and Chairel as varieties of
Chakpa.
Reconstruction
Proto-Luish has been reconstructed by Huziwara (2012),
with additional Proto-Luish lexical reconstructions by Matisoff (2013).
Like
Proto-Austroasiatic
Proto-Austroasiatic is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austroasiatic languages. Proto-Mon–Khmer (i.e., all Austroasiatic branches except for Munda) has been reconstructed in Harry L. Shorto's ''Mon–Khmer Comparative Dictionary'', while a ...
and Jingpho, Proto-Luish has a
sesquisyllabic syllable structure.
Proto-Luish reconstructions by Huziwara (2012),
can be found at Wiktionary's
list of Proto-Luish reconstructions.
References
*Benedict, Paul K. (1972). ''Sino-Tibetan: a conspectus''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Huziwara, Keisuke. 2016
タマン語の系統再考 / On the genetic position of Taman reconsidered In ''Kyoto University Linguistic Research '' 35, p. 1-34.
*Luce, George H. (1985). ''Phases of Pre-Pagan Burma: languages and history, vol. I, II''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
*Shafer, Robert (1974). ''Introduction to Sino-Tibetan''. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowit
Bibliography
* George van Driem (2001). ''Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region.'' Brill.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Luish languages
Sal languages
Languages of India
Languages of Myanmar