| Also Known As: Naxi,Nasi,Lomi,Nahsi,Mosso,Mo-su,Nakhi,Moso,Mu
Description:
The Naxi language, or actually languages (also known as Nakhi, Nasi, Lomi, Moso, or Mo-su) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by some 300,000 people mostly concentrated in the Lijiang City Yulong Naxi Autonomous County (Yǜlóng Nàxīzú Zìzhìxiàn 玉龍納西族自治縣) of the province of Yunnan, China. Nakhi is also the name of the ethnic group that speaks it.
There are at least two Naxi languages. Western Naxi is fairly homogeneous, whereas Eastern Naxi consists of several mutually unintelligible dialects.
It is commonly proposed that the languages lie within the Lolo-Burmese languages, though views vary on whether to include it within one of the branches of this group, or to make it a sibling equidistant to Lolo and Burmese. However, Thurgood and La Polla (2003) state that "The position of Naxi ... is still unclear despite much speculation," and leave it unclassified within Tibeto-Burman.
The syntactic structure is similar to other Tibeto-Burmese languages spoken in Yunnan.
According to the 2000 Chinese census, 310,000 people speak Nakhi, and 100,000 of those are monolingual. Approximately 170,000 speak Chinese, Tibetan, Bai, or English as a second language. Almost all speakers live in Yunnan,..... full article at Wikipedia |
