Nuosu language


Nuosu or Nosu, also known as Northern Yi, Liangshan Yi, and Sichuan Yi, is the prestige language of the Yi people; it has been chosen by the Chinese government as the standard Yi language and, as such, is the only one taught in schools, both in its oral and written forms. It was spoken by two million people and was increasing as of ; 60% were monolingual.
Nuosu is the native Nuosu/Yi name for their own language and is not used in Mandarin Chinese; although it may sometimes be spelled out for pronunciation, the Chinese characters for nuòsū have no meaning.
The occasional terms 'Black Yi' and 'White Yi' are castes of the Nuosu people, not dialects.
Nuosu is one of several often mutually unintelligible varieties known as Yi, Lolo, Moso, or Noso; the six Yi languages recognized by the Chinese government hold only 25% to 50% of their vocabulary in common. They share a common traditional writing system, though this is used for shamanism rather than daily accounting.

Dialects of Nuosu

Lama (2012)

Lama gives the following classification for Nuosu dialects.
The Qumusu 曲木苏 dialect is the most divergent. The other dialects group as Niesu 聂苏 and as Nuosu proper. Niesu has lost voiceless nasals and has developed diphthongs.
Adu 阿都话, characterized by its labial–velar consonants, is spoken in Butuo County 布拖县 and Ningnan County 宁南县 of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province, and also in parts of Puge County 普格, Zhaojue County 昭觉, Dechang County 德昌, and Jinyang County 金阳.
Nyisu or Yellow Yi 黄彝 of Fumin County, Yunnan may either be a Suondi Yi dialect or Nisu dialect.
Zhu & Zhang reports that the Shuitian people reside mostly in the lowlands of the Anning River drainage basin, in Xichang, Xide, and Mianning counties of Liangshan Prefecture in Sichuan. They are called Muhisu by the neighboring Yi highland people. Shuitian is spoken in the following locations. Shuitian belongs to the Shengzha dialect of Northern Yi.
According to Bradley, there are 3 main dialects of Nosu, of which the Southeastern one is most divergent.
Chen lists the following dialects of Nosu. Also listed are the counties where each respective dialect is spoken.
Classic Yi is a syllabic logographic system of 8,000-10,000 glyphs. Although similar to Chinese characters in function, the glyphs are independent in form, with little to suggest a direct relation.
The Modern Yi script is a standardized syllabary derived from the classic script in 1974 by the local government of China. It was made the official script of the Yi languages in 1980. There are 756 basic glyphs based on the Liangshan dialect, plus 63 for syllables only found in Chinese borrowings.
In 1958 the Chinese government had introduced a Roman-based alphabet based on the romanized script of Gladstone Porteous of Sayingpan.
, Sichuan, China, showing Modern Yi, Chinese and English text.

Phonology

The written equivalents of the phonemes listed here are "Yi Pinyin". For information about the actual script used see the section above entitled Writing System.

Consonants

Vowels

Nuosu has five pairs of phonemic vowels, contrasting in a feature Eatough calls loose throat vs. tight throat. Underlining is used as an ad-hoc symbol for tight throat; phonetically, these vowels are laryngealized and/or show a retracted tongue root. Loose vs. tight throat is the only distinction in the two pairs of syllabic consonants, but in the vocoids it is reinforced by a height difference.
The syllabic consonants y u are essentially the usual Sinological vowels, so y can be identified with the vowel of the Mandarin 四 sì "four", but they have diverse realizations. Y completely assimilates to a preceding coronal except in voice, e.g. ꑮ xyp "to marry", and are after a labial nasal, e.g. ꂪꌦ hmy sy "cloth". U assimilates similarly after laterals, retaining its rounding, e.g. ꆭ hlu "to stir-fry", and is after a labial nasal, e.g. ꂥ hmu "mushroom"; moreover it induces a labially trilled release of preceding labial or alveolar stops, e.g. ꅥ ndup "to hit".
The tight-throat phone occurs as the realization of in the high tone. That it is phonemically loose-throat is shown by its behaviour in tightness harmony in compound words.

Tones

The high-mid tone is only marginally contrastive. Its two main sources are from tone sandhi rules, as the outcome of a mid tone before another mid tone, and the outcome of a low-falling tone after a mid tone. However, these changes do not occur in all compounds where they might: for instance ꊈ wo "bear" + ꃀ mop "mother" regularly forms ꊈꂾ wo mox "female bear", but ꃤ vi "jackal" + ꃀ mop "mother" forms ꃤꃀ vi mop "female jackal" without sandhi. The syntax creates other contrasts: tone sandhi applies across the boundary between object and verb, so is present in SOV clauses like ꃅꏸꇐꄜꎷ mu jy lu ti shex "Mujy looks for Luti", but is absent in OSV clauses like ꃅꏸꇐꄜꎹ mu jy lu ti shep "Luti looks for Mujy". A few words, like ꑞ xix "what?", have underlying high-mid tone.

Vocabulary and grammar

Nuosu is an analytic language, the basic word order is Subject–object–verb. Vocabularies of Nuosu can be divided into content words and function words. Among content words, nouns in Nuosu do not perform inflections for grammatical gender, number, and cases, classifiers are required when the noun is being counted; verbs do not perform conjugations for its persons and tenses; adjectives are usually placed after the word being fixed with a structural particle and do not perform inflections for comparison. Function words, especially grammatical particles, have a significant role in terms of sentence constructions in Nuosu. Nuosu does not have article words, but conjunctions and postposition words are used.

Numbers

Classifiers are required when numbers are used for fixing nouns.
Number0123456789101112
Yi script
Readingt͡sʰɨ̂ɲîsɔ̄lɨ̄ŋɯ̄fűʂɨ̂hi̋ɡūt͡sʰīt͡sʰīt͡sʰɨ̂t͡sʰīɲî