The Loloish languages, also known as Yi in China and occasionally Ngwi or Nisoic, are a family of fifty to a hundred

Sino-Tibetan languages 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. ...

spoken primarily in the

Yunnan province Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the C ...

of China. They are most closely related to

Burmese Burmese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia * Burmese people * Burmese language * Burmese alphabet * Burmese cuisine * Burmese culture Animals * Burmese cat * Burmese chicken * Burmese (hor ...

and its relatives. Both the Loloish and Burmish branches are well defined, as is their superior node, Lolo-Burmese. However, subclassification is more contentious.

SIL Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

(2013 edition) estimated a total number of 9 million native speakers of Ngwi languages, the largest group being the speakers of Nuosu (Northern Yi) at 2 million speakers (2000 PRC census).

Names

''Loloish'' is the traditional name for the family. Some publications avoid the term under the misapprehension that ''Lolo'' is pejorative, but it is the Chinese rendition of the autonym of the

Yi people The Yi or Nuosu people,; zh, c=彝族, p=Yízú, l=Yi ethnicity historically known as the Lolo,; vi, Lô Lô; th, โล-โล, Lo-Lo are an ethnic group An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with eac ...

and is pejorative only when it is written with a particular Chinese character (one that uses a beast, rather than a human, radical), a practice that was prohibited by the Chinese government in the 1950s. Italics in original. David Bradley uses the name ''Ngwi'', which is also used by ''Ethnologue'', and Lama (2012) uses ''Nisoic''. Paul K. Benedict coined the term ''Yipho'', from ''Yi'' and a common autonym element (-''po'' or -''pho''), but it never gained wide usage.

Internal classification

Bradley (2007)

Loloish was traditionally divided into a northern branch, with

Lisu Lisu may refer to: *Lisu people, an ethnic group of Southeast Asia *Lisu language, spoken by the Lisu people * Old Lisu Alphabet or Fraser Alphabet *Lisu syllabary *Lisu (Unicode block), the block of Unicode characters for the Lisu language. *Lisu ...

and the numerous

Yi languages The Yi or Nuosu people,; zh, c=彝族, p=Yízú, l=Yi ethnicity historically known as the Lolo,; vi, Lô Lô; th, โล-โล, Lo-Lo are an ethnic group in China, Vietnam, and Thailand. Numbering nine million people, they are the seven ...

and a southern branch, with everything else. However, per Bradley and Thurgood there is also a central branch, with languages from both northern and southern. Bradley adds a fourth, southeastern branch. * Northern Loloish: Nuosu (2 million), Nasu (1.0 million), etc. * Central Loloish:

(940,000)– Lipho (250,000) (incl. Lolopo (570,000), Lalo (320,000)),

Micha Micah (; ) is a given name. Micah is the name of several people in the Hebrew Bible ( Old Testament), and means "Who is like God?" The name is sometimes found with theophoric extensions. Suffix theophory in '' Yah'' and in ''Yahweh'' results in ...

(50,000), Lahu (600,000), Jinuo (21,000), etc. * Southern Loloish: Akha– Hani,

Phunoi The Phunoi ( th, ผู้น้อย; Lao: ຜູ້ນ້ອຍ; also spelled ''Phu Noi'' or ''Phounoi'', and called Côông, ''Cống'', or formerly ''Khong'' in Vietnam) are a tribal people of Laos, Northern Thailand, and Vietnam. They are r ...

– Bisu, Pholo and ’Ugong (aberrant; removed in Bradley 1997) *

Southeastern Loloish The Southeastern Loloish languages, also known as Southeastern Ngwi, are a branch of the Loloish languages. In Lama's (2012) classification, it is called ''Axi-Puoid'', which forms the Nisoish branch together with the ''Nisoid'' (''Nisu–Lope'' ...

: Nisu, Phula, Sani, Azha, Khlula, Muji, Phowa, etc. Ugong is divergent; Bradley (1997) places it with the Burmish languages. The Tujia language is difficult to classify due to divergent vocabulary. Other unclassified Loloish languages are Gokhy (Gɔkhý), Lopi and Ache.

Lama (2012)

Lama (2012) classified 36 Lolo–Burmese languages based on a computational analysis of shared phonological and lexical innovations. He finds the Mondzish languages to be a separate branch of Lolo-Burmese, which Lama considers to have split off before Burmish did. The rest of the Loloish languages are as follows: The Nisoish, Lisoish, and Kazhuoish clusters are closely related, forming a clade ("Ni-Li-Ka") at about the same level as the other five branches of Loloish. Lama's Naxish clade has been classified as

Qiangic 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 Sichuan ...

rather than Loloish by Guillaume Jacques and Alexis Michaud (''see

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 Sichuan ...

''). A Lawoish (Lawu) branch has also been recently proposed. Satterthwaite-Phillips' (2011) computational phylogenetic analysis of the Lolo-Burmese languages does support the inclusion of Naxish (Naic) within Lolo-Burmese, but recognizes Lahoish and Nusoish as coherent language groups that form independent branches of Loloish.

Lesser-known languages

Notes

References

* * * * * * {{Lolo-Burmese languages Lolo-Burmese languages Languages of Myanmar Languages of China