Naxi is a Tibeto-Burman language or group of languages spoken by some 310,000 people concentrated in the Lijiang City Yulong Naxi Autonomous County

Yulong Naxi Autonomous County

Yulong Naxi Autonomous County is located in Lijiang City Prefecture, Yunnan, China.-External links:*...

 (Yùlóng Nàxīzú Zìzhìxiàn 玉龍納西族自治縣) of the province of Yunnan

Yunnan

Yunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately and with a population of 45.7 million . The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with...

, China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. Nakhi

Nakhi

The Nakhi are an ethnic group inhabiting the foothills of the Himalayas in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, as well as the southwestern part of Sichuan Province in China....

 is also the name of the ethnic group that speaks it.

Classification

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 these 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

Yunnan

Yunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately and with a population of 45.7 million . The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with...

.

Usage

According to the 2000 Chinese census, 310,000 people speak Nakhi, and 100,000 of those are monolingual. Approximately 170,000 speak Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

, Tibetan

Tibetan language

The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...

, Bai, or English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 as a second language. Almost all speakers live in Yunnan

Yunnan

Yunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately and with a population of 45.7 million . The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with...

, but some are in Tibet, and it is possible that some live in Burma.

The language is commonly spoken among Nakhi people in everyday life and the language is in little danger of dying out soon, although the written literacy is still a rare skill. The language can be written in the Dongba script

Dongba script

The Dongba, Tomba or Tompa symbols are a system of pictographic glyphs used by the ²dto¹mba of the Naxi people in southern China. In the Naxi language it is called ²ss ³dgyu 'wood records' or ²lv ³dgyu 'stone records'. They are perhaps a thousand years old. The glyphs may be used as rebuses for...

, the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

 or the Geba script

Geba script

Geba is a syllabic script for the Naxi language. It is called ¹Ggo¹baw in Naxi, adapted as Geba, 哥巴, in Chinese. Some glyphs resemble the Yi script, and some appear to be adaptations of Chinese characters. Geba is only used to transcribe mantras, and there are few texts, though it is sometimes used...

, but all these written forms are still rarely used in everyday life and most local people are not able to read it.

The three most common dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s are Lijiang, Lapao, and Lutien. Lijiang, which is spoken in the western parts of the language's range, is the most uniform of the three and it is heavily influenced by Putonghua and Yunnanese dialects, proved by its huge volume of loan words from Chinese. The eastern dialects, which are much more native and have many dialectal differences.

Nakhi

Nakhi

The Nakhi are an ethnic group inhabiting the foothills of the Himalayas in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, as well as the southwestern part of Sichuan Province in China....

 is also the name of an official nationality that speaks Naxi. They generally resent usage of the old term "Moso".

Consonants

IPA and Naxi Pinyin orthography

	Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...	Labiodental Labiodental consonant In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Dental	Retroflex Retroflex consonant A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...	Alveolo-palatal Alveolo-palatal consonant In phonetics, alveolo-palatal consonants are palatalized postalveolar sounds, usually fricatives and affricates, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate...	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Voiceless Phonation Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology...  stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	p b		t d			c ?	k g	ʔ
Aspirated Aspiration (phonetics) In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...  stop	pʰ p		tʰ t			cʰ ?	kʰ k
Voiced Phonation Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology...  stop	b bb		d dd			ɟ ?	ɡ gg
Prenasalized stop	ᵐb nb		ⁿd nd			ᶮɟ ?	ᵑɡ mg
Voiceless affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...			ts z	tʂ zh	tɕ j
Aspirated affricate			tsʰ c	tʂʰ ch	tɕʰ q
Voiced affricate			dz zz	dʐ rh	dʑ jj
Prenasalized affricate			ⁿdz nz	ⁿdʐ nr	ⁿdʑ nj
Voiceless fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...		f f	s s	ʂ sh	ɕ x		x h
Voiced fricative		v v	z ss	ʐ r	ʑ y		ɣ w
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m m		n n			ɲ ni	ŋ ng
Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....			l l
Flap or trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....			r ?
Semivowel Semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...	w u, ɥ iu					j i

Vowels

In the Lijiang dialect, there are nine vowels. They are: /i, e, a, ɑ, y, ɨ, ə, o, u/, written i, ee, ei, a, iu, v, e, o, u, ai, er (not necessarily in that order).

Tones

There are four tones: high level, mid-level, low level (or falling), and low rising. They are written -l, -, -q, -f.

External links

• A web page with some recent publications on the Naxi language.
• World Digital Library
  World Digital Library
  The World Digital Library is an international digital library operated by UNESCO and the United States Library of Congress.The WDL has stated that its mission is to promote international and intercultural understanding, expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet, provide...
  
   presentation of NZD185: Romance and Love-Related Ceremonies. Library of Congress
  Library of Congress
  The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
  
  . Primary source 19th and 20th century manuscripts from the Naxi people, Yunnan Province, China; only pictographic writing system still in use anywhere in the world.