Lisu is a tonalTibeto-Burman language spoken in Yunnan, northern Burma, and Thailand and a small part of India. Along with Lipo, it is one of two languages of the Lisu people. Lisu has many dialects that originate from the country in which they live. Hua Lisu, Pai Lisu, and Lu Shi Lisu dialects are spoken in China. Although they are mutually intelligible, some have many more loan words from other languages than others. The Lisu language is closely related to the Lahu and Akha languages and is also related to Burmese, Jingphaw, and Yi languages.
Dialects
Lisu can be split up into three dialects: northern, central, and southern, with northern being the standard.
The Lisu alphabet currently in use throughout Lisu-speaking regions in China, Burma, and Thailand was primarily developed by two Protestant missionaries from different missionary organizations. The more famous of the two is James O. Fraser, a British evangelist from the China Inland Mission. His colleague, who developed the original version of the alphabet was Sara Ba Thaw, a polyglot Karen preacher based in Myitkyina, Burma, who belonged to the American Baptist Mission. Ba Thaw had prepared a simple Lisu catechism by 1915. The script now widely known as the "Fraser alphabet" was finished by 1939, when Fraser's mission houses in the Lisu ethnic areas of Yunnan Province received their newly printed copies of the Lisu New Testament.
Lisu syllabary
From 1924 to 1930, a Lisu farmer called Ngua-ze-bo invented the Lisu syllabary from Chinese script, Dongba script and Geba script. However, it looks more different from the Chinese script than Chu Nom and Sawndip. Since Ngua-ze-bo initially carved his characters on bamboos, the syllabary is known as the Lisu Bamboo script. It has a total of 1250 glyphs and 880 characters.
Latin Lisu alphabet
A new Lisu alphabet based on pinyin was created in 1957, but most Lisu continued to use the old alphabet. The Fraser alphabet was officially recognized by the Chinese government in 1992, since which time its use has been encouraged.
Burmese Lisu script
In a few places in Myanmar in which Lisu is spoken, an orthography based on the Burmese alphabet has been developed and is taught to speakers and used in several publications and school books.
Phonology
The Lisu phonological inventory is as follows.
Vowels
and the fricative vowel are in complementary distribution: is only found after palato-alveolars, though an alternate analysis is possible, with the palato-alveolars viewed as allophones of the palatals before and. The distinction originates from proto-Lolo–Burmese consonant clusters of the type *kr or *kj, which elsewhere merge, but where Lisu normally develops, they remain distinct with the latter producing the type, the former the type. Inherited palatal affricates + also become. is variable across dialects. It may be either endolabial or exolabial, central, or even merged with. The distinction between and is marginal, and both are written in pinyin.
Tones
Lisu has 6 tones: high, mid creaky, mid, low, rising, and low checked . In some dialects the creaky tone is higher than mid tone, in others they are equal. The rising tone is infrequent, but common in baby talk ; both high and rising tone are uncommon after voiced consonants.
Consonants
and are in complementary distribution, with before front vowels. is marginal, occurring in a few words before or. The subdialect Fraser first encountered also distinguishes a retroflex series,, but only before. Medial glides appear before. These are with velars and with bilabials and. The latter consonant has a non-nasal allophone in the imperative particle. is only distinctive before, and in some dialects is merged with. In Southern Lisu, the velar plosives become alveopalatal before front vowels. The vowels and trigger an offglide on preceding consonants, so are pronounced. The vowels do not occur initially—or, at least, in initial position they are pronounced. It has been argued that the initial vowels are phonetically, so initial consonants do not need to be posited in such cases, or that they are phonemically, with glottal stop.
