Kathu and Thou () constitute a Lolo-Burmese language of Balong (坝聋), Nanping Township (南屏镇), Guangnan County, Yunnan,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. The Kathu are locally known as the White Yi (白彝). Wu Zili (2004) estimates that Kathu has a total of more than 7,000 speakers in Guangnan County (including in Dayashao 大牙少), as well as in Jinping County, Yunnan. ''Ethnologue'' mentions a possible presence in

Guangxi Guangxi (; ; Chinese postal romanization, alternately romanized as Kwanghsi; ; za, Gvangjsih, italics=yes), officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (GZAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the People's Republic ...

Province. Kathu-Thou is notable for having initial consonant clusters, which within the Lolo-Burmese branch are also found in

Written Burmese The Burmese alphabet ( my, မြန်မာအက္ခရာ ''mranma akkha.ra'', ) is an abugida used for writing Burmese. It is ultimately adapted from a Brahmic script, either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabet of South India. The Burmese ...

( Old Burmese) and

Jinuo The Jino (also spelled Jinuo) people (, endonym: ) are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. They live in an area called the Jino Mountains (Jinuoshan 基� ...

(Hsiu 2014:66). Wu (2004) lists the onset clusters pl, pʰl, bl, ml, kl, kʰl, gl, ql, qʰl, ɢl, ŋl.

Varieties

Hsiu (2014:65) identifies two varieties, both spoken in Nanping Township (南屏镇). *Kathu ( autonym: '), spoken in Anwang village 安王村 *Thou ( autonym: '), spoken in Balong village 坝聋村

Classification

Kathu vocabulary is largely similar to those of other Mondzish languages. However, there are various words that do not appear to be of

Lolo-Burmese 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 reas ...

origin, and are derived from an unknown Tibeto-Burman branch (Hsiu 2014).Hsiu, Andrew. 2014.
Mondzish: a new subgroup of Lolo-Burmese
. In ''Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics (IsCLL-14)''. Taipei: Academia Sinica. Hsiu (2014) suggests that Kathu could be added to George van Driem's list of Trans-Himalayan " fallen leaves." Bradley (1997) classified Kathu as a Northern Loloish language, while Bradley (2007) classified it as a Southeastern Loloish language. However, Pelkey (2011:458)Pelkey, Jamin. 2011. ''Dialectology as Dialectic: Interpreting Phula Variation''. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. notes that Kathu and Mo'ang are not Southeastern Loloish languages.

References

*Wu Zili ��自立 2004. "Gasu language ��僳话. In ''Studies on selected languages of Yunnan'' ��南特殊语言研究 486-513. Kunming: Yunnan People's Press ��南民族出版社

Varieties

Classification

See also

References

Further reading