Mpi is a

Loloish language 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 rel ...

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

. The number of speakers is in decline. It is spoken in the following two villages in northern

. *Ban Dong, Tambon Suan Khuean สวนเขื่อน, Mueang Phrae District, Phrae Province (autonym: ' in Ban Dong) *Ban Sakoeng, Tambon Yot ยอด, Song Khwae District, Nan Province (autonym: ' Ban Sakoeng) Since the Mpi of Thailand migrated from Mengla, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, China over 300 years ago, there could also possibly be Mpi speakers in China (Nahhas 2007).

Phonology

Mpi has six tones and two phonations in its

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

modal voice Modal voice is the vocal register used most frequently in speech and singing in most languages. It is also the term used in linguistics for the most common phonation of vowels. The term "modal" refers to the resonant mode of vocal folds; that is ...

and stiff voice:

Phonology

References

Further reading