Burmish languages

The Burmish languages are Burmese, including Standard Burmese, Arakanese and other Burmese dialects such as the Tavoyan dialects as well as non-literary languages spoken across Myanmar and South China such as Achang, Lhao Vo, Lashi, and Zaiwa.

Burmish
Geographic distribution	Myanmar
Linguistic classification	Sino-Tibetan Burmo-Qiangic? Lolo-Burmese Burmish
Subdivisions	Burmic Maruic
Glottolog	burm1266[1]

L1 speakers of Burmish languages and other Sino-Tibetan languages according to Ethnologue

Names

Many Burmish names are known by various names in different languages (Bradley 1997).

Names of Burmish languages

Autonym	Jinghpaw name	Burmese name	Chinese name
Lawngwaw	Maru	မရူ	Làngsù 浪速
Tsaiwa	Atsi	ဇီး	Zǎiwǎ 载瓦
Lachik	Lashi	လရှီ	Lāqí 喇期, Lèqí 勒期
Ngochang	-	မိုင်သာ	Āchāng 阿昌
Pela	-	ဖော်လာ	Bōlā 波拉

In China, the Zaiwa အဇီး 载瓦 (local Chinese exonym: Xiaoshan ရှောင့်ရှန် 小山), Lhao Vo 浪速 (local Chinese exonym: Lang'e 浪峨), Lashi 勒期 (local Chinese exonym: Chashan 茶山), and Pela 波拉 are officially classified as Jingpo people (Bolayu Yanjiu). The local Chinese exonym for the Jingpho proper is Dashan 大山.

Dai Qingxia (2005:3) lists the following autonyms and exonyms for the various Burmish groups as well as for Jingpho which is not a Burmish language, with both Chinese character and IPA transcriptions (given in square brackets).[2]

Burmish autonyms and exonyms

Language	Lhao Vo people 浪速 လန့်စု လူမျိုး	Jingpho people 景颇 ဂျိန်းဖောလူမျိုး	Zaiwa people 载瓦 အဇီး လူမျိုး	Lashi people 勒期 လရှီ လူမျိုး	Pela people 波拉 ဖော်လာလူမျိုး
Lhao Vo name 浪速语 လန့်စုအမည်	Lang'e 浪峨 [lɔ̃51 vɔ31] လန်ကေအ်	Bowo 波沃 [pʰauk55 vɔ31] ပေါဝေါ	Zha'e 杂蛾 [tsa35 vɔ31] အဇီး	Lashi 勒期 [lă31 tʃʰik35] လရှီ	Buluo 布洛 [pă31 lɔ31] ပူလူဝ်
Jingpho name 景颇语 ဂျိန်းဖောအမည်	Moru 默汝 [mă31 ʒu31] မိုရူ	Jingpho 景颇 [tʃiŋ31 pʰoʔ31] ဂျိန်းဖော	Aji 阿纪 [a31 tsi55] အကျိ	Leshi 勒施 [lă31 ʃi55] လေရှီ	Boluo 波洛 [po31 lo31] ပေါလူဝ်
Zaiwa name 载瓦语 အဇီးအမည်	Lelang 勒浪[lă21 la̠ŋ51] လေအ်လန်	Shidong 石东 [ʃi55 tu̠ŋ55] ရှီဒုင်	Zaiwa 载瓦 [tsai31 va51] အဇီး	Lashi 勒期 [lă21 tʃʰi55] လရှီ	Buluo 布洛 [pă21 lo21] ပူလူဝ်
Lashi name 勒期语 လရှီအမည်	Langwu 浪悟 [laŋ31 vu51] လန်ငူ	Puwu 铺悟 [pʰuk55 vu51] ဖူဝူ	Zaiwu 载悟 [tsai31 vu51] ဇိုင်ဝု	Lashi 勒期 [lă31 tʃʰi51] လရှီ	Buluo 布洛 [pă31 lɔ51] ပူလူဝ်
Pela name 波拉语 ဖော်လာအမည်	Longwa 龙瓦 [lõ31 va31] လုင်းငွာ	Baowa 泡瓦 [pʰauk31 va31] ပါဝ်ဝါ	Diwa 氐瓦 [ti31 va31] သိဝါ	Lashi 勒期 [lă31 tʃʰi55] လရှီ	Pela 波拉 [po31 la31] ဖော်လာ

Autonyms are:[2]

• Lhao Vo လန့်စု 浪速 (Lang'e 浪峨): lɔ̃51 vɔ31
• Jingpho ဂျိန်းဖော 景颇: tʃiŋ31 pʰoʔ31
• Zaiwa အဇီး 载瓦: tsai31 va51
• Lashi လရှီ 勒期: lă31 tʃʰi51
• Pela ဖော်လာ 波拉: po31 la31

The Chashan refer to themselves as ŋɔ31 tʃʰaŋ55 (Echang 峨昌), the Jingpho as phuk55, the Lashi as tsai33wu31 (tsai33 wu51), the Lhao Vo as lă31 laŋ31, the Lisu as lji33 səu31, and the Han Chinese as la31 xɛ31 (Dai 2010:153).[3]

Languages

Lama (2012)

Based on innovations in their tonal systems, Lama (2012: 177–179) classifies the languages as follows:

• Burmish
  • Burmese cluster (Southern Burmish)
  • Achang–Zaiwa (Northern Burmish)
    • Achang cluster
      • Achang
    • Zaiwa cluster
      • Pela (Bola)
      • Leqi–Zaiwa
        • Lashi (Leqi)
        • Langsu (Maru), Zaiwa (Atsi)

Chashan, a recently discovered Northern Burmish language, is closely related to Lashi.

Maingtha is a Northern Burmish language whose speakers are classified as a Shan subgroup.[4]

Nishi (1999)

Based on distinct treatment of the pre-glottalized initials of proto-Burmish, Nishi (1999: 68-70) divides the Burmish languages into two branches, Burmic and Maruic. The Burmic languages changed voiceless preglottalized stops into voiceless aspirate stops and preglottalized voiced sonorants into voiceless sonorants. The Maruic languages in contrast reflect voiceless preglottalized and affricate consonants as voiceless unaspirated and affricates with largyngealized vowels, and voiced preglottalized sonorants as voiced sonorants with laryngealized vowels. The Burmic Languages include Burmese, Achang, and Xiandao. The Maruic languages include Atsi (Zaiwa), Lashi (Leqi), Maru (Langsu), and Bola. Nishi does not classify Hpon and Nusu.

Burmic

The Arakanese language retains r- separate from y-, whereas the two fall together in most Burmese dialects and indeed most Burmish languages. Tavoyan has kept kl- distinct. No dialect has kept ry- distinct from r-, but this may be an independent innovation in the various dialects. Merguiese is apparently the least well studied Burmese dialect.

• Burmese language (incl. Standard Burmese and Arakanese)
• Achang (Huang et al. 1992, Wannemacher 1995-7)
• Xiandao (Huang et al. 1992)
• ?Hpon/Hpun (Luce 1985: Charts S, T, V; Henderson 1986)
• Danu

Maruic

• Atsi (Zaiwa) (Burling 1967, Dai 1981, Yabu 1982, Xu and Xu 1984, Luce 1985: Charts S, T, V; Dai 1986, Huang et al. 1992, Wannemacher 1995-7, Wannemacher 1998)
• Bola (Dai et al.: 1991; Huang et al. 1992, Edmondson 1992)
• Lashi (Luce 1985: Charts S, T, V; Huang et al. 1992; Wannemacher 1995-7)
• Maru (Lhao Vo) (Clerk 1911, Burling 1967, Luce 1985: Charts S, T, V; Okell 1988; Dai et al.: 1991; Huang et al. 1992; Wannemacher 1995-7)
• Chashan also goes here

Mann (1998)

Mann (1998: 16, 137) in contrast groups together Achang, Bela (by which he probably means Bola), Lashi, Maru, and Atsi together as North Burmic.

Bradley (1997)

David Bradley places aberrant Ugong with Burmish rather than with Loloish:

• Ugong–Burmish
  • Ugong
  • Burmish
    • Burmese
    • Burmish
      • Hpun
      • Core Burmish
        • Maru, Atsi
        • Lashi, Achang; Bola; Chintau (= Xiandao)

Footnotes

1. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Burmish". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
2. Dai Qingxia (2005). A study of Langsu [浪速语研究]. Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House.
3. Dai Qingxia [戴庆厦] (2010). The Chashan people of Pianma and their language [片马茶山人及其语言]. Beijing: The Commercial Press [商务印书馆].
4. Sawada, Hideo. 2017. Two Undescribed Dialects of Northern Burmish Sub-branch: Gyannoʔ and Thoʔlhang. Presented at ICSTLL 50, Beijing, China.

References

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