Tosu (; autonym: ') is a moribund
Qiangic language of China which shows strong affiliations to both the
Loloish languages
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 spoken primarily in the Yunnan province of China. They are most closely related to Burmese and its rel ...
and to
Tangut, the language of the
Western Xia
The Western Xia or the Xi Xia (), officially the Great Xia (), also known as the Tangut Empire, and known as ''Mi-nyak''Stein (1972), pp. 70–71. to the Tanguts and Tibetans, was a Tangut-led Buddhist imperial dynasty of China tha ...
. Yu (2012) classifies it as an Ersuic language, which belongs to the
Qiangic branch. There are "almost no Tosu speakers left", or "practically" no Ersu speakers left.
[Yu (2012:1–2)]
About 2,000 Tosu people live in
Miǎnníng county and the villages around it, as well as in six outlying townships of that county, namely Hòushān (后山), Fùxīng (复兴), Huì’ān (惠安), Hāhā (哈哈), Línlǐ (林里), and Shābā town (沙坝镇).
[Chirkova, Katia. 2014]
The Duoxu Language and the Ersu-Lizu-Duoxu relationship
''Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area'' (37). Chirkova (2014) reports that it is spoken by more than 9 individuals, all in their seventies and eighties.
References
Bibliography
* Yu, Dominic. 2012. ''Proto-Ersuic''. Ph.D. dissertation. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, Department of Linguistics.
*
Nishida, Tatsuo, 1973, 多続訳語の研究 : 新言語トス語の構造と系統
Study of the Tosu–Chinese Vocabulary Tosu I-yu: the structure and lineage of Tosu, a new language 松香堂 Shokado, Kyoto
* Nishida, Tatsuo, 1975, "Hsi-hsia, Tosu, and Lolo–Burmese", Sino-Tibetan Conference VIII, Berkeley
* Nishida, Tatsuo, 1976, "Hsi-hsia, Tosu, and Lolo–Burmese languages", ''Studia Phonologica'' 10:1–15
External links
ELAR archive of Duoxu language documentation materials
Qiangic languages
Tanguts
Endangered Sino-Tibetan languages
Extinct languages of Asia
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