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.

Names

Many Burmish names are known by various names in different languages.
AutonymJinghpaw nameBurmese nameChinese name
LawngwawMaruမရူLàngsù 浪速
TsaiwaAtsiဇီးZǎiwǎ 载瓦
LachikLashiလရှီLāqí 喇期, Lèqí 勒期
Ngochang-မိုင်သာĀchāng 阿昌
Pela-ဖော်လာBōlā 波拉

In China, the Zaiwa အဇီး 载瓦, Lhao Vo 浪速, Lashi 勒期, and Pela 波拉 are officially classified as Jingpo people. The local Chinese exonym for the Jingpho proper is Dashan 大山.
Dai Qingxia 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.
LanguageLhao 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 လန်ကေအ်Bowo 波沃 ပေါဝေါZha'e 杂蛾 အဇီးLashi 勒期 လရှီBuluo 布洛 ပူလူဝ်
Jingpho name 景颇语
ဂျိန်းဖောအမည်		Moru 默汝
မိုရူ		Jingpho 景颇 ဂျိန်းဖောAji 阿纪 အကျိLeshi 勒施 လေရှီBoluo 波洛 ပေါလူဝ်
Zaiwa name 载瓦语
အဇီးအမည်		Lelang 勒浪 လေအ်လန်Shidong 石东 ရှီဒုင်Zaiwa 载瓦 အဇီးLashi 勒期 လရှီBuluo 布洛 ပူလူဝ်
Lashi name 勒期语
လရှီအမည်		Langwu 浪悟 လန်ငူPuwu 铺悟 ဖူဝူZaiwu 载悟 ဇိုင်ဝုLashi 勒期 လရှီBuluo 布洛 ပူလူဝ်
Pela name 波拉语
ဖော်လာအမည်		Longwa 龙瓦 လုင်းငွာBaowa 泡瓦 ပါဝ်ဝါDiwa 氐瓦 သိဝါLashi 勒期 လရှီPela 波拉 ဖော်လာ

Autonyms are:
The Chashan refer to themselves as ŋɔ˧˩tʃʰaŋ˥, the Jingpho as phuk˥, the Lashi as tsai˧wu˧˩, the Lhao Vo as lă˧˩laŋ˧˩, the Lisu as lji˧səu˧˩, and the Han Chinese as la˧˩xɛ˧˩.

Languages

Lama (2012)

Based on innovations in their tonal systems, Lama classifies the languages as follows:
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.

Nishi (1999)

Based on distinct treatment of the pre-glottalized initials of proto-Burmish, Nishi 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, Lashi, Maru, 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.
;Maruic
Mann in contrast groups together Achang, Bela, Lashi, Maru, and Atsi together as North Burmic.

Bradley (1997)

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