Lama is a

Bai language The Bai language (Bai: ; ) is a language spoken in China, primarily in Yunnan Province, by the Bai people. The language has over a million speakers and is divided into three or four main dialects. Bai syllables are always open, with a rich set o ...

spoken along the Lancang River (upper

Mekong The Mekong or Mekong River is a trans-boundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's List of rivers by length, twelfth longest river and List of longest rivers of Asia, the third longest in Asia. Its estimated length is , ...

) in Lanping County and Weixi County, in western

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked Provinces of China, province in Southwest China, 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 ...

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 ...

. Up to the 16th edition of ''

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 ...

'' (2009), the code lay was assigned to "Lama (Myanmar)", listed in the index of languages by C. F. Voegelin and F. M. Voegelin (1977) as a Nungish language of Myanmar having 3,000 speakers. In 2013 the reference name for the code was changed to "Bai, Lama", identifying one of two Northern Bai languages, the other being Panyi Bai.

References

Sino-Tibetan languages {{st-lang-stub