Pyen (Hpyin, Phen; ') is a

Loloish language The Loloish languages, also known as Yi (like the Yi people) and occasionally Ngwi or Nisoic, are a family of 50–100 Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily in the Yunnan province of Southwestern China. They are most closely related to Bur ...

Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...

. It is spoken by about 700 people in two villages near Mong Yang,

Shan State Shan State (, ; , ) is a administrative divisions of Myanmar, state of Myanmar. Shan State borders China (Yunnan) to the north, Laos (Louang Namtha Province, Louang Namtha and Bokeo Provinces) to the east, and Thailand (Chiang Rai Province, Chia ...

, Burma, just to the north of

Kengtung Kengtung ( , ), also spelt Kyaingtong (; ), classical name Tungapuri, is a city in Shan State, Myanmar (formerly Burma). It is the principal town of Kengtung Township and the former seat of Kengtung State, a minor principality. Kengtung is locat ...

.Person, Kirk R. 2007
''A preliminary phonological sketch of Pyen, with comparison to Bisu''
Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Pyen borrows more from Lahu and Shan, while Bisu borrows more from Northern Thai and Standard Thai. Pyen and Bisu are both mutually intelligible, since the two form a dialect chain along with Laomian and Laopin of China, and some Phunoi varieties of Laos (Person 2007). Pyen shares 36%

lexical similarity In linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 (or 100%) would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words. ...

with Hani, 32% with Lahu, and 31% with

Lisu Lisu may refer to: *Lisu people, an ethnic group of the mountainous regions of Yunnan (China), Arunachal Pradesh (India), northern Myanmar and Thailand *Lisu language, Tibeto-Burman language spoken by the Lisu people **Fraser script or Old Lisu A ...

References

*http://sealang.net/sala/archives/pdf8/person2007preliminary.pdf *

Shintani Tadahiko Tadahiko Shintani (, born October 1946) is a Japanese linguist and Professor Emeritus of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, specializing in the phonology of New Caledonian languages and Southeast Asian languages. Biography Shintani is fro ...

. 2009.
The Pyen (or Phen) language: its classified lexicon
'. Fuchu (Tokyo-to): Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa. {{Authority control Southern Loloish languages Languages of Myanmar