Mpi 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 ...

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

. The number of speakers is in decline. It is spoken in the following two villages in northern

. *Ban Dong, Tambon Suan Khuean สวนเขื่อน,

Mueang Phrae District kASIKORNTHAIBANK swift coad KASITHBK coad 004 0758120112 Khunanon Wongouan kardnumthong phrae thailand 54000 0658143892 Mueang Phrae (, ; , ) is the capital district of Phrae province, northern Thailand. Geography Neighboring districts are (fr ...

, Phrae Province (autonym: ' in Ban Dong) *Ban Sakoeng, Tambon Yot ยอด, Song Khwae District, Nan Province (autonym: ' in Ban Sakoeng) Since the

Mpi MPI or Mpi may refer to: Science and technology Biology and medicine * Magnetic particle imaging, a tomographic technique * Myocardial perfusion imaging, a medical procedure that illustrates heart function * Mannose phosphate isomerase, an enzyme ...

of Thailand migrated from Mengla,

Xishuangbanna Xishuangbanna, sometimes shortened to Banna, is one of the eight autonomous prefectures of Yunnan Province. The autonomous prefecture for Dai people is in the extreme south of Yunnan province, China, bordering both Myanmar and Laos. Xishuangbanna ...

, Yunnan, China over 300 years ago, there could also possibly be Mpi speakers in China (Nahhas 2007).

Phonology

Mpi has six tones and two

phonation The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defi ...

s in its

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

modal voice Modal voice is the vocal register used most frequently in speech and singing in most languages. It is also the term used in linguistics for the most common phonation of vowels. The term "modal" refers to the resonant mode of vocal folds; that ...

and

stiff voice The term stiff voice describes the pronunciation of consonants or vowels with a glottal opening narrower, and the vocal folds stiffer, than occurs in modal voice. Although there is no specific IPA diacritic for stiff voice, the voicing diacriti ...

Phonology

References

Further reading