Mondzish (Mangish) is a small group of languages that 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 reas ...

in the classification of Lama (2012). The Mondzish languages are spoken in Funing, Guangnan, Malipo, and Napo counties of China and Hà Giang and Cao Bang provinces of northern Vietnam. The autonyms of Mondzishspeaking peoples often begins with *man-. Lama (2012) considers *man- to be cognate with Mán (蛮), which is an ancient Chinese exonym for non-Chinese peoples to the south. Mondzish languages are spoken in

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 Provinces of China, province in Southwest China, 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 ...

, China and across the border in Hà Giang Province, Vietnam. According to Hsiu (2014),

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 ...

is related.

Classification

Hsiu (2014:73) classifies the Mondzish languages as follows. Additional languages from Hsiu (2017) are also included. *

(Thou) *''Nuclear Mondzish'' (''Nuclear Mangish'') ** Muangphe **

Mango A mango is an edible stone fruit produced by the tropical tree ''Mangifera indica''. It is believed to have originated in the region between northwestern Myanmar, Bangladesh, and northeastern India. ''M. indica'' has been cultivated in South a ...

Manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...

** Maang (also known as Mo'ang, Meang) ** Mondzi or Mantsi (also known as Lô Lô by the Vietnamese) ** Maza ** Mauphu,

Motang Bhotang is a village in Sindhupalchok District in the Bagmati Zone of central Nepal. At the time of the 1991 Nepal census The 1991 Nepal census was a widespread national census conducted by the Nepal Central Bureau of Statistics. Working with ...

** Mongphu A revised classification of Mondzish languages by Hsiu (2018)Hsiu, Andrew. 2018
Mondzish branch
is as follows. *Northwestern Mondzish:

, Thou *Core (Nuclear) Mondzish **Southern Mondzish: Mondzi / Mantsi cluster **Southeastern Mondzish: Meang / Maang cluster **Eastern Mondzish ***

cluster *** Mongphu *** Maza **Central Mondzish *** Muangphe *** Mauphu,

Sound changes

Lama (2012) lists the following sound changes from

Proto-Loloish Proto-Loloish is the reconstructed ancestor of the Loloish languages. Reconstructions include those of David Bradley (1979), James Matisoff (2003), and Ziwo Lama (2012). In later publications, in place of ''Loloish'', David Bradley instead uses ...

as Mondzish innovations. * * * * * *

References

*Edmondson, Jerold A. 2003.
Three Tibeto-Burman Languages of Vietnam
'. *Hsiu, Andrew. 2014.
Mondzish: a new subgroup of Lolo-Burmese
. In ''Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics (IsCLL-14)''. Taipei: Academia Sinica. *Lama, Ziwo Qiu-Fuyuan (2012),
Subgrouping of Nisoic (Yi) Languages
', thesis, University of Texas at Arlington. {{Lolo-Burmese languages