Mantsi (autonym: '; also called Mondzi, Munji (mo21 ndʑi21), Lolo, Flowery Lolo, or Red Lolo, is a Lolo-Burmese language. Speakers are located mostly in

Funing County, Yunnan Funing County (; Zhuang language: ) is located in Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, in the east of Yunnan province, China. It is the easternmost county-level division of Yunnan, bordering Guangxi to the north, east and southeast, and ...

, China and

Hà Giang Province Hà is a Vietnamese surname. The name is transliterated as He in Chinese and Ha in Korean. Ha is the anglicized variation of the surname Hà. It is also the anglicized variation of Hạ. Notable people with the surname Hà * Hà Kiều Anh, ...

, Vietnam. In China they are classified as a subgroup of the

Yi people The Yi or Nuosu people,; zh, c=彝族, p=Yízú, l=Yi ethnicity historically known as the Lolo,; vi, Lô Lô; th, โล-โล, Lo-Lo are an ethnic group in China, Vietnam, and Thailand. Numbering nine million people, they are the seve ...

. In Vietnam they are called '' Lô Lô'' and is classified as one of the official 54 ethnic groups in the country. Mantsi has 40 initials, 27 vowels (11 monophthongs and 13 diphthongs), and 6 tones (Lama 2012).

Classification

Mantsi may be related to the

Kathu Kathu is a town in South Africa, and the iron ore capital of the Northern Cape province. Its name means "town under the trees", after the Camel Thorn forest it is situated in. The phrase "the town under the trees" was coined by an engineer wo ...

(Kasu, Gasu) and Mo'ang (') languages of

Wenshan Prefecture Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture is an autonomous prefecture in southeastern Yunnan Province, People's Republic of China and the easternmost prefecture-level division of the province. It borders Baise, Guangxi to the east, Vietnam's ...

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 (Edmondson 2003). Lama (2012) concludes that Mantsi (Mondzi) and Maang constitute the most divergent branch of the

Lolo-Burmese languages The Lolo-Burmese languages (also Burmic languages) of Burma and Southern China form a coherent branch of the Sino-Tibetan family. Names Until ca. 1950, the endonym ''Lolo'' was written with derogatory characters in Chinese, and for this re ...

Distribution

''Monji'' or ''Mondzi'' is reportedly spoken in some villages of Muyang Township, Funing County. ''Munji'' is reportedly spoken by the Flowery Yi (Lolo) of Donggan Town, Malipo County, Yunnan. It is closely related to the Mandzi or Mantsi of the Flowery Lolo and Black Lolo of Vietnam. The Red Lolo and Flowery Lolo live across the border in Đồng Văn district, Hà Giang province of Vietnam. Both speak similar languages. The language spoken by the Red Lolo was investigated by Jerold A. Edmondson in the late 1990s. In Funing County in Yunnan across the border in China, related languages are spoken by peoples known as the White Lolo (Edmondson 2003).

In Vietnam

The Lô Lô ethnic group of northern Vietnam consists of 3,134 people in Hà Giang and Cao Bằng, also including some in Mường Khương District of Lào Cai Province. They are also known as Mùn Di, Di, Màn Di, La La, Qua La, Ô Man, and Lu Lộc Màn. ;Flowery Lolo * Hà Giang Province **Xín Cái,

Mèo Vạc District The Miao are a group of linguistically-related peoples living in Southern China and Southeast Asia, who are recognized by the government of China as one of the 56 official ethnic groups. The Miao live primarily in southern China's mountains, in ...

**Lũng Cù, Đồng Văn District ;Red Lolo * Hà Giang Province **

** Yên Minh District ;White Lolo * Hà Giang Province **

;Black Lolo * Bảo Lạc District,

Cao Bằng Cao Bằng () is a city in northern Vietnam. It is the capital and largest settlement of Cao Bằng Province. It is located on the bank of the Bằng Giang river, and is around away from the border with China's Guangxi region. According to the ...

Province **Hồng Tri (including Nà Van village) **Đức Hạnh (Bảo Lạc) **Nghàm Lồm, Cô Ba Township

Phonology

Phonology of Mondzi:

Consonants

�can only appear as a

coda Coda or CODA may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * Movie coda, a post-credits scene * ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television *''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...

. Mondzi also has 3

consonant clusters In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education ...

Classification

Distribution

In Vietnam

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Monophthongs

Diphthongs

Tones

References

Further reading