Lisu | |
Nativename: | ꓡꓲ-ꓢꓴ ꓥꓳꓽ, Lisu ngot |
States: | China, Myanmar (Burma), India, Thailand |
Ethnicity: | Lisu |
Speakers: | c. 940,000 |
Date: | 2000–2007 |
Ref: | e18 |
Familycolor: | Sino-Tibetan |
Fam2: | Tibeto-Burman |
Fam3: | Lolo–Burmese |
Fam4: | Loloish |
Fam5: | Lisoish |
Fam6: | Lisu–Lalo |
Nation: | Weixi Lisu Autonomous County, Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture (PRC) |
Script: | Fraser alphabet, Lisu syllabary, Latin |
Iso3: | lis |
Glotto: | lisu1250 |
Glottorefname: | Lisu |
Notice: | IPA |
Lisu (Fraser alphabet: ꓡꓲ-ꓢꓴ, ꓡꓲ‐ꓢꓴ ꓥꓳꓽ or ꓡꓲꓢꓴ; Latin: Lisu ngot; Lisu syllabary: ; Chinese: c=傈僳语|p=Lìsùyǔ; Burmese: လီဆူဘာသာစကား, in Burmese pronounced as /lìsʰù bàðà zəɡá/) is a tonal Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Yunnan (Southwestern China), Northern Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand and a small part of India. Along with Lipo, it is one of two languages of the Lisu people. Lisu has many dialects that originate from the country in which they live. Hua Lisu, Pai Lisu and Lu Shi Lisu dialects are spoken in China. Although they are mutually intelligible, some have many more loan words from other languages than others.
The Lisu language is closely related to the Lahu and Akha languages and is also related to Burmese, Jingphaw and Yi languages.
In China, the Lisu people are mostly found in Yunnan, the majority living mainly in Nujiang and Weixi,[1] but also in Baoshan, Dehong, Lincang, Chuxiong, Luquan and Dali. In Sichuan, where they make a small minority, they also speak Lipo, and they are sometimes classified under the Yi nationality. A number of Lisu can also be found in southern Tibet.
In Myanmar, it is spoken in Shan State, Kachin State, Sagaing Division and Mandalay Division. The two states are bordered by Yunnan. The Fraser script was invented in Myanmar by Sara Ba Thaw.
In India, it is spoken in the Changlang District of Arunachal Pradesh and possibly in the Tinsukia District of Assam. See for more information. Lisu people in India are called Yobin.
In Northern Thailand, it is spoken mainly in the provinces of Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Mae Hong Son and Kamphaeng Phet.
Possibly, there are also perhaps some Lisu speakers in the Phongsaly Province of Laos and in the Lai Chau Province of Vietnam.
Three dialects can be distinguished: northern, central and southern, with northern being the standard.
Bradley (2003) lists the following three Lisu dialects.
In their study of Lisu dialects, Mu and Sun (2012) split Lisu into three dialects.
Mu and Sun (2012) compare a total of five datapoints in their comparative vocabulary table.
See main article: Pollard script. Sam Pollard's A-Hmao was adapted to write Lipo, another Lisoish language (sometimes called Eastern Lisu) spoken by the Lisu people.
See main article: Fraser script. The Lisu alphabet currently in use throughout Lisu-speaking regions in China, Burma and Thailand was primarily developed by two Protestant missionaries from different missionary organizations. The more famous of the two is James O. Fraser, a British evangelist from the China Inland Mission. His colleague, who developed the original version of the alphabet (later revised and improved with Fraser and various colleagues from the C.I.M.) was Sara Ba Thaw, a polyglot Karen preacher based in Myitkyina, Burma, who belonged to the American Baptist Mission.
Ba Thaw had prepared a simple Lisu catechism by 1915. The script now widely known as the "Fraser alphabet" was finished by 1939, when Fraser's mission houses in the Lisu ethnic areas of Yunnan Province (China) received their newly printed copies of the Lisu New Testament.
From 1924 to 1930, a Lisu farmer named Ngua-ze-bo (pronounced pronounced as /lis/; Chinese: 汪忍波/哇忍波) invented the Lisu syllabary from Chinese script, Dongba script and Geba script. However, it looks more different from the Chinese script than Chữ Nôm and Sawndip (Zhuang logograms). Since Ngua-ze-bo initially carved his characters on bamboos, the syllabary is known as the Lisu Bamboo script (傈僳竹书).
It has a total of 1250 glyphs and 880 characters.
A new Lisu alphabet based on pinyin was created in 1957, but most Lisu continued to use the old alphabet. The Fraser alphabet was officially recognized by the Chinese government in 1992, since which time its use has been encouraged.
In a few places in Myanmar in which Lisu is spoken, an orthography based on the Burmese alphabet has been developed and is taught to speakers and used in several publications and school books.
The Lisu phonological inventory is as follows.
Front | Back | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | ||
Close | pronounced as /link/~pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/~pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
Mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
Open | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ |
In Central Lisu, pronounced as /[i]/ is heard as a syllabic pronounced as /[z̩]/ when after alveolar sibilant sounds, and as pronounced as /[ʐ̩]/ when after retroflex sibilant sounds. pronounced as //ɑ// is heard as more fronted pronounced as /[a]/ when following alveolo-palatal sounds.
pronounced as //y// is variable across dialects. It may be either endolabial or exolabial, central pronounced as /[ʉ]/ or even merged with pronounced as //u//. The distinction between pronounced as /ɯ/ and pronounced as /ɤ/ is marginal, and both are written in pinyin.
Lisu has six tones: high pronounced as /[˥]/, mid creaky pronounced as /[˦ˀ]/, mid pronounced as /[˧]/, low pronounced as /[˨˩]/, rising pronounced as /[˧˥]/ and low checked pronounced as /[˨˩ʔ]/ (that is, pronounced as /[tá ta̰ ta tà tǎ tàʔ]/). In some dialects the creaky tone is higher than mid tone, in others they are equal. The rising tone is infrequent, but common in baby talk (which has a stereotypical disyllabic low–rising pattern); both high and rising tone are uncommon after voiced consonants.
Labial | Alveolar | Retroflex | (Alveo-) Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ | |||
Plosive/ Affricate | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
Fricative | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
pronounced as /link/~pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
Continuant | pronounced as /link/ |
Medial glides appear before pronounced as //ɑ//. These are pronounced as //w// with velars and pronounced as //j// with bilabials and pronounced as /link/. The latter consonant (see rhinoglottophilia) has a non-nasal allophone in the imperative particle pronounced as /[hɑ́]/. pronounced as //ɣ// is only distinctive before pronounced as //ɑ// and in some dialects is merged with pronounced as //j//.
In Central Lisu, pronounced as //j// can be heard as an alveolo-palatal pronounced as /[ʑ]/ when before pronounced as //i//. In Southern Lisu, the velar plosives become alveopalatal before front vowels. The vowels pronounced as //u// and pronounced as //e// trigger an offglide on preceding consonants, so pronounced as //tu du te de// are pronounced pronounced as /[tfu dvu tje dje]/.
The vowels pronounced as //ɯ ɤ// do not occur initially—or, at least, in initial position they are pronounced pronounced as /[ɣɯ ɣɤ]/. It has been argued that the initial vowels pronounced as //i e y u ɯ ɤ// are phonetically pronounced as /[ji je fy fu ɣɯ ɣɤ]/, so initial consonants do not need to be posited in such cases (and marginal pronounced as //f// can be removed from the inventory of native words), or that they are phonemically pronounced as //ʔV//, with glottal stop.