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Burmic
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 reason has sometimes been avoided. Shafer (1966–1974) used the term "Burmic" for the Lolo-Burmese languages. The Chinese term is ''Mian–Yi'', after the Chinese name for Burmese and one of several words for Tai, reassigned to replace ''Lolo'' by the Chinese government after 1950. Possible languages The position of Naxi (Moso) within the family is unclear, and it is often left as a third branch besides Loloish and Burmish. Lama (2012) considers it to be a branch of Loloish, while Guillaume Jacques has suggested that it is a Qiangic language. The Pyu language that preceded Burmese in Burma is sometimes linked to the Lolo-Burmese family, but there is no good evidence for any particular classification, and it is best left unclassified within S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burmish Languages
The Burmish languages are a subgroup of the Sino-Tibetan languages consisting of Burmese (including Standard Burmese, Arakanese, and other Burmese dialects such as the Tavoyan dialects) as well as non-literary languages spoken across Myanmar and South China such as Achang, Lhao Vo, Lashi, and Zaiwa. The various Burmish languages have a total of 35 million native speakers. Names Many Burmish names are known by various names in different languages (Bradley 1997). In China, the Zaiwa ဇိုင်ဝါး/အဇီး 载瓦 (local Chinese exonym: Xiaoshan ရှောင့်ရှန် 小山), Lhao Vo 浪速 (local Chinese exonym: Lang'e 浪峨), Lashi 勒期 (local Chinese exonym: Chashan 茶山), and Pela 波拉 are officially classified as Jingpo people (''Bolayu Yanjiu''). The local Chinese exonym for the Jingpho proper is Dashan 大山. Dai Qingxia (2005:3) lists the following autonyms and exonyms for the various Burmish groups as well as for Jingpho which is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tibeto-Burman
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak Tibeto-Burman languages. The name derives from the most widely spoken of these languages, Burmese and the Tibetic languages, which also have extensive literary traditions, dating from the 12th and 7th centuries respectively. Most of the other languages are spoken by much smaller communities, and many of them have not been described in detail. Though the division of Sino-Tibetan into Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman branches (e.g. Benedict, Matisoff) is widely used, some historical linguists criticize this classification, as the non-Sinitic Sino-Tibetan languages lack any shared innovations in phonology or morphology to show that they comprise a clade of the phylogenetic tree. History During the 18th century, several scholars noticed parallel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burmo-Qiangic Languages
The Burmo-Qiangic or Eastern Tibeto-Burman languages are a proposed family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken in Southwest China and Myanmar. It consists of the Lolo-Burmese and Qiangic branches, including the extinct Tangut language. Classification Guillaume Jacques & Alexis Michaud (2011)Jacques, Guillaume, and Alexis Michaud. 2011.Approaching the historical phonology of three highly eroded Sino-Tibetan languages" ''Diachronica'' 28:468–498. argue for a Burmo-Qiangic branch of Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) with two primary subbranches, Qiangic and Lolo-Burmese. Similarly, David Bradley (2008) proposes an Eastern Tibeto-Burman branch that includes Burmic ( Lolo-Burmese) and Qiangic. Bradley notes that Lolo-Burmese and Qiangic share some unique lexical items, even though they are morphologically quite different; whereas all Lolo-Burmese languages are tonal and analytical, Qiangic languages are often non-tonal and possess agglutinative morphology. However the position of Naic is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sino-Tibetan Languages
Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Sinitic languages. Other Sino-Tibetan languages with large numbers of speakers include Burmese (33 million) and the Tibetic languages (6 million). Four United Nations member states (China, Singapore, Myanmar, and Bhutan) have a Sino-Tibetan language as a main native language. Other languages of the family are spoken in the Himalayas, the Southeast Asian Massif, and the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Most of these have small speech communities in remote mountain areas, and as such are poorly documented. Several low-level subgroups have been securely reconstructed, but reconstruction of a proto-language for the family as a whole is still at an early stage, so the higher-level structure of Sino-Tibetan re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qiangic Languages
Qiangic (''Chʻiang, Kyang, Tsiang'', Chinese: 羌語支, "''Qiang'' language group"; also Rmaic, formerly known as Dzorgaic) is a group of related languages within the Sino-Tibetan language family. They are spoken mainly in Southwest China, including Sichuan and northern Yunnan. Most Qiangic languages are distributed in the prefectures of Ngawa, Garzê, Ya'an and Liangshan in Sichuan with some in Northern Yunnan as well. Qiangic speakers are variously classified as part of the Qiang, Tibetan, Pumi, Nakhi, and Mongol ethnic groups by the People's Republic of China. The extinct Tangut language of the Western Xia is considered to be Qiangic by some linguists, including Matisoff (2004).Matisoff, James. 2004"Brightening" and the place of Xixia (Tangut) in the Qiangic subgroup of Tibeto-Burman/ref> The undeciphered Nam language of China may possibly be related to Qiangic. Lamo, Larong and Drag-yab, or the Chamdo languages, a group of three closely related Sino-Tibetan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after India, representing 17.4% of the world population. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and Borders of China, borders fourteen countries by land across an area of nearly , making it the list of countries and dependencies by area, third-largest country by land area. The country is divided into 33 Province-level divisions of China, province-level divisions: 22 provinces of China, provinces, 5 autonomous regions of China, autonomous regions, 4 direct-administered municipalities of China, municipalities, and 2 semi-autonomous special administrative regions. Beijing is the country's capital, while Shanghai is List of cities in China by population, its most populous city by urban area and largest financial center. Considered one of six ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bailang Language
Bailang or Pai-lang ( zh, c=白狼, p=Bái láng, l=white wolf) is the earliest recorded Tibeto-Burman language, known from three short songs, totalling 44 four-syllable lines, recorded in a commentary on the '' Book of the Later Han''. The language is clearly either Lolo–Burmese or closely related, but as of the 1970s it presented "formidable problems of interpretation, which have been only partially solved". Text The ''Book of the Later Han'' (compiled in the 5th century from older sources) relates that the songs were recorded in western Sichuan and a Chinese translation presented to Emperor Ming of Han (58–75 AD). This episode is recorded in the "Treatise on the Southern Barbarians" chapter, which includes the Chinese translation, but not the original songs. The Bailang people are described as living to the west of Wenshan, a mountain of the Minshan range in the southern part of modern Mao County. According to the oldest extant commentary on the ''Book of the Later Han' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Bradley (linguist)
David Bradley is a linguist who specializes in the Tibeto-Burman languages of Southeast Asia. Born in the United States, Bradley was educated at the SOAS, University of London. He has spent most of his career in Australia and is currently professor emeritus at La Trobe University. Bradley has been an invited lecturer and keynote speaker many times and throughout the world, in particular the Himalayan Languages Symposium and the International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics. He is also the chief editor of the journal '' Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area''. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2004. Publications *Bradley, David (1979). ''Lahu Dialects.'' (Oriental Monograph 23). Canberra: Faculty of Asian Studies and Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eigh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exonym And Endonym
An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate themselves, their place of origin, or their language. An exonym (also known as xenonym ) is an established, ''non-native'' name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used primarily outside the particular place inhabited by the group or linguistic community. Exonyms exist not only for historico-geographical reasons but also in consideration of difficulties when pronouncing foreign words, or from non-systematic attempts at transcribing into a different writing system. For instance, is the endonym for the country that is also known by the exonyms ''Germany'' and in English and Italian, respectively, and in Spanish and French, respectively, in Polish, and and in Finni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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) (Bradley 1997). A Sanie ''pinyin'' orthography had also been developed recently (Bradley 2005). Names *Ngwi, David Bradley's reconstruction for the autonym of Loloish speakers, is based on the Sanie autonym ' (also pronounced ' by some speakers) (Bradley 2005). Proto-Ngwi *ŋw- changed into '- or '- in most modern Loloish languages. Dialects Bradley (2005) reports significant variation in the Sanie language, and briefly compares the following 6 dialects. * East: Zhaozong 昭宗 (also in Huahongyuan and Yuhua) * Southeast: Chejiabi 车家壁 (also in Shiju) * Northeast: Gulu 古律 * North: Qinghe 清河 * Northwest: Luomian 罗免 * Southwest: Tuoji 妥吉 Bradley (2005) notes that the Sanie varieties spoken in the plains of Xishan Distri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mantsi Language
Mantsi (autonym: '; also called Lô Lô, Flowery Lolo, White Lolo or Black Lolo, is a Lolo-Burmese language. Speakers are mostly located in Hà Giang Province, Vietnam. In China, speakers are classified as a subgroup of the Yi people. In Vietnam they are called '' Lô Lô'' and is classified as one of the official 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam. Classification Mantsi may be related to the Kathu (Kasu, Gasu) and Mo'ang (') languages of Wenshan Prefecture, Yunnan, China (Edmondson 2003). Lama (2012) concludes that Mantsi (Mondzi) and Maang constitute the most divergent branch of the Lolo-Burmese languages. Distribution ''Monji'' or ''Mondzi'' is reportedly spoken in some villages of Muyang Township, Funing County, Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ..., Ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ugong Language
The Gong language (also '''Ugong'', ''Ugong'', ''Lawa'' or ''Ugawng'', with ''U''- meaning 'person') is an endangered Tibeto-Burman language of Western Thailand, spoken in isolated pockets in Uthai Thani and Suphanburi provinces. History The ethnic group was first known to Westerners in the 1920s, when the language was already considered in severe decline (Kerr 1927). In the 1970s, David Bradley began working on the language in the several areas where it was still used, by which time it was already extinct in two of the locations given by Kerr (1927) about 50 years earlier. The people were then forced from two of these villages when the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand built dams over the Kwae Yai and Khwae Noi River (Bradley 1989). Because of the displacement of the people of an already declining language, the language is considered especially vulnerable to extinction. The last children speakers were in the 1970s and the children now speak Thai as their first l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
