Northern Qiang is a Qiangic language of the Tibeto-Burman language family spoken by approximately 130,000 people in north-central Sichuan Province, China.
Unlike its close relative Southern Qiang, Northern Qiang is not a tonal language.
Northern Qiang dialects [edit]
Northern Qiang is composed of several different dialects. Many of which are freely inter communicable. Sun Hongkai is his book on Qiang in 1981 divides Northern Qiang into the following dialects: Luhua, Mawo, Zhiimulin, Weigu and Yadu. These dialects are located in Heishui county as well as the northern part of Mao county. The Luhua, Mawo, Zhimulin, and Weigu varieties of Northern Qiang are spoken by the Heishui Tibetans. The Mawo dialect is considered to be the prestige dialect by the Heishui Tibetans.
Northern Qiang consonants [edit]
Vowel harmony [edit]
Vowel harmony exists in the Mawo (麻窝) dialect. For example, the realization of the word "one" (a) is influenced by the classifiers:[1]
- e si (a day)
- a qep (a can)
- ɑ pɑu (a packet)
- o ʁu (a barrel)
- ɘ ʑu (a pile)
- ø dy (a mouth)
See also [edit]
References [edit]
External links [edit]
Bibliography [edit]
- Bradley, David. (1997). Tibeto-Burman languages and classification. In D. Bradley (Ed.), Papers in South East Asian linguistics: Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas (No. 14, pp. 1–71). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
- Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (Ed.). (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671-159-X. (Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com).
- LaPolla, Randy J. with Chenglong Huang. 2003. A Grammar of Qiang, with Annotated Texts and Glossary (Mouton Grammar Library). Berlin. Mouton de Gruyter.
- Evans, Jonathan P. 2006. Vowel quality in Hongyan Qiang. Language and Linguistics 7.4: 937-960.
