The Jino language (Jinuo 基諾語;
autonyms: ', ') constitutes a pair of
Loloish language varieties spoken by the
Jino people
The Jino (also spelled Jinuo) people (, endonym: ) are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. They live in an area called the Jino Mountains (Jinuoshan 基 ...
of
Yunnan
Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the ...
,
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
.
Varieties
In total, there are about 28,320 Jinuo people living in China. A total of 70–80% of Jinuo people can speak either of the Jino varieties fluently. The Jino language constitutes the two subdialects of Youle Jino and Buyuan Jinuo,
and they are not
mutually intelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...
.
Buyuan Jino is spoken by 21,000 people;
most of the speakers are monolingual, which means they only speak Buyuan Jino.
There is no official written form. Most Jino people also speak one of the
Tai languages
The Tai or Zhuang–Tai languages ( th, ภาษาไท or , transliteration: or ) are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family. The Tai languages include the most widely spoken of the Tai–Kadai languages, including Standard Thai or S ...
or Chinese. The ISO 639-3 code for the Jino varieties are "jiu" for Youle Jino and "jiy" for Buyuan Jino.
The Glottocodes for the Jino varieties are "youl1235" for Youle Jino
and "buyu1238" for Buyuan Jino.
Classification
The exact classification of Jino within the
Loloish
The Loloish languages, also known as Yi in China and occasionally Ngwi or Nisoic, are a family of fifty to a hundred Sino-Tibetan languages spoken primarily in the Yunnan province of China. They are most closely related to Burmese and its relat ...
branch of
Sino-Tibetan
Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...
language family remains uncertain. Jino is classified as a
Southern Loloish
The Southern Loloish or Southern Ngwi languages, also known as the Hanoish (Hanish) languages, constitute a branch of the Loloish languages that includes Akha and Hani.
Languages
The branches included in Lama (2012), with languages from Bradle ...
(Hanoish) language by Ziwo Lama (2012),
but as a
Central Loloish
The Central Loloish languages, also known as Central Ngwi, is a branch of Loloish languages in Bradley (1997). It is not used in Lama's (2012) classification. Central Loloish is also not supported in Satterthwaite-Phillips' (2011) computational p ...
language by Bradley (2007). Jino is also classified as a Southern Loloish language in Satterthwaite-Phillips' (2011) computational phylogenetic analysis of the Lolo-Burmese languages.
History
The use of Jino is rapidly declining: in the 1980s, 70–80% of the Jino people used Jino; in 2000, less than 50% of the population could speak Jino.
The Jino people were recognized by the state council on 6 June 1979 as the last recognized minority nationality in China.
Historically, the Jino people were organized as a matriarchal culture, and “Jino” means “descending from the uncle,” and it refers to the importance of mother’s brother in matriarchal societies.
From a language aspect, Jino is similar to other languages under the branch of the Tibeto-Burman languages, because the Jino people moved from the northwest of Yunnan province to the territories they are at now, but the timing and routes of this migration remain uncertain,
Geographic distribution
Jino is spoken in Jinuo Township (Jinuo Mountain), located in
Jinghong
Jinghong (; khb, ᨩ᩠ᨿᨦᩁᩩ᩵ᨦ; th, เชียงรุ่ง, , ; lo, ຊຽງຮຸ່ງ; also formerly romanised as ''Chiang Hung'', ''Chengrung'', ''Cheng Hung'', Jeng Hung, ''Jinghung'', ''Keng Hung'', ''Kiang Hung'' and ' ...
City of the
Sipsongpanna Dai autonomous prefecture of
Yunnan
Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the ...
province, China.
Tonemes
There are five tonemes in Buyuan Jino. Gai believes that the function of tonemes are distinguishing lexical meanings and grammatical meanings.
# (high level tone, 55): it tends to phonetically shorten vowels
# (mid level tone, 44): lower than 55, though still high
# (low falling tone, 31)
# (rising tone, 35)
# (high falling tone, 53)
(53) tone is considered difficult to distinguish when listening to a native speaker.
Writing system
Jino does not have an official writing system, but it developed several systems of signs to cover communication in different situations.
The Jino used engraved wooden or bamboo boards to record debts between villages.
Notes
References
*
{{Lolo-Burmese languages
Southern Loloish languages
Languages of China