Proto-Loloish is the reconstructed ancestor of the

Loloish languages 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 ...

. Reconstructions include those of David Bradley (1979),

James Matisoff James Alan Matisoff ( zh, , t=馬蒂索夫, s=马蒂索夫, p=Mǎdìsuǒfū or zh, , t=馬提索夫, s=马提索夫, p=Mǎtísuǒfū; born July 14, 1937) is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a ...

(2003), and Ziwo Lama (2012). In later publications, in place of ''Loloish'', David Bradley instead uses the term ''Ngwi'' based on a conservative

autonym Autonym may refer to: * Autonym, the name used by a person to refer to themselves or their language; see Exonym and endonym * Autonym (botany), an automatically created infrageneric or infraspecific name See also * Nominotypical subspecies, in zo ...

in the

Sanie language Sanie (autonym: ' or ') is a Loloish language of Yunnan, China. It is similar to Samataw. There were 17,320 ethnic Sanie in 1998, but only about 8,000 spoke the Sanie language fluently. The Sanie are also known as the ''White Yi'' (白彝) (Brad ...

.Bradley, David. 2005. "Sanie and language loss in China".''International Journal of the Sociology of Language''. Volume 2005, Issue 173, Pp. 159–176.

Bradley (1979)

Matisoff (2003)

Li (2011)

Li Yongsui (2011) reconstructs Proto-Lolo-Burmese (Proto-Mian-Yi 缅彝) based on 30 languages.

Lama (2012)

Lama (2012) reconstructs 37 consonants for Proto-Loloish (which he calls ''Proto-Nisoic''), 7 of which (marked in green) can occur as syllable finals. The glides /w/ and /j/ occur medially. *Vowels (8): *Tones (5): 1, 2, 3 (unchecked tones), H, L (checked tones)

References and notes

*Bradley, David. 1979. ''Proto-Loloish''. London: Curzon Press. . *Lama, Ziwo Qiu-Fuyuan. 2012
''Subgrouping Of Nisoic (Yi) Languages: A Study From The Perspectives Of Shared Innovation And Phylogenetic Estimation''
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Arlington. *Li Yongsui ��永燧 2011. ''Burmo-Yi Phonology'' ��彝语音韵学 Beijing: China Social Sciences Academy Press. *Matisoff, James. 2003
''Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and Philosophy of Sino-Tibetan Reconstruction''
University of California publications in linguistics, v. 135. Berkeley: University of California Press. .