Southern Qiang is a

Sino-Tibetan language Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

of the Qiangic branch spoken by approximately 81,300 people along the Minjiang () river in

Sichuan Province Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

. Southern Qiang dialects preserve archaic pronoun flexions, while they have disappeared in Northern Qiang. Unlike its close relative

Northern Qiang Northern Qiang is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Qiangic branch, more specifically falling under the Tibeto-Burman family. It is spoken by approximately 60,000 people in East Tibet, and in north-central Sichuan Province, China. Unlike its cl ...

, Southern Qiang is a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

Southern Qiang dialects

Southern Qiang is spoken in Li County (in Taoping , etc.),

Wenchuan County Wenchuan County is a county in Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, People's Republic of China. The county has an area of , and a population of 100,771 as of 2010. Wolong National Nature Reserve is a protected area located in ...

(in Longxi , Luobozhai 萝卜寨, Miansi 绵虒, etc.), and parts of

Mao County Mao County or Maoxian (; ; Qiang: ʂqini) is a county in Ngawa Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. It has an area of 3,903 and a population of 106,700 as of 2006. 88.9% of the population are Qiang people. The county seat is Fengyi (). Natu ...

. It consists of seven dialects: Dajishan, Taoping, Longxi, Mianchi, Heihu, Sanlong, and Jiaochang, which are greatly divergent and are not mutually intelligible. Names seen in the older literature for Southern Qiang dialects include ''Lofuchai'' (''Lophuchai'', ''Lopu Chai''), ''Wagsod'' (''Wa-gsod'', ''Waszu''), and ''Outside/Outer Mantse'' (''Man-tzŭ''). The Southern Qiang dialect of Puxi Township has been documented in detail by Huang (2007). Liu (1998) adds Sānlóng () and Jiàocháng (較場) as Southern subdialects. Sims (2016) characterizes Southern Qiang as the perfective agreement suffixes innovation group. Individual dialects are highlighted in ''italics''. ;Southern Qiang *'inward' *ji innovation subgroup **North

Wenchuan Wenchuan County is a county in Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, People's Republic of China. The county has an area of , and a population of 100,771 as of 2010. Wolong National Nature Reserve is a protected area located i ...

: ''Longxi'' 龙溪乡 **South

: ''Miansi'' 绵虒镇 *'downward' *ɚ innovation subgroup **Western Lixian: ''Puxi'' 蒲溪乡, ''Xuecheng'' 薛城镇, ''Muka'' 木卡乡, ''Jiuzi'' 九子村 **Eastern Lixian: ''Taoping'' 桃坪乡, ''Tonghua'' 通化乡

Phonology

The consonants of Southern Qiang are presented in the table below: * are heard as velar before front vowels. * is also heard as a bilabial . The vowels of Southern Qiang are presented in the table below: * Vowels can also be heard as . Southern Qiang has six tones as represented below:

Status

As with many of the

Qiangic languages Qiangic (''Ch'iang, Kyang, Tsiang'', Chinese: 羌語支, "''Qiang'' language group"; formerly known as Dzorgaic) is a group of related languages within the Sino-Tibetan language family. They are spoken mainly in Southwest China, including Sich ...

, Southern Qiang is becoming increasingly threatened. Because the education system largely uses

Standard Chinese Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standa ...

as a medium of instruction for the Qiang people, and as a result of the universal access to schooling and television, most Qiang children are fluent or even monolingual in Chinese while an increasing percentage cannot speak Qiang.

References

Bibliography

* * * Qiangic languages Tonal languages Qiang people Endangered Sino-Tibetan languages {{st-lang-stub

Southern Qiang dialects

Phonology

Status

See also

References

Bibliography