| Akha | |
|---|---|
| A˯ka˯daw˯ | |
| Native to | Myanmar, China, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam |
| Ethnicity | Akha |
Native speakers | 620,000 (2007–2015)[1] |
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | ahk |
| Glottolog | akha1245 |
Akha is the language spoken by the Akha people of southern China (Yunnan Province), eastern Burma (Shan State), northern Laos, and northern Thailand.
Western scholars group Akha, Hani and Honi into the Hani languages, treating all three as separate mutually unintelligible, but closely related, languages. The Hani languages are, in turn, classified in the Southern Loloish subgroup of Loloish. Loloish and the Mru languages are closely related and are grouped within Tibeto-Burman as the Lolo-Burmese languages.
In accordance with China's official classification of ethnic groups, which groups all speakers of Hani languages into one ethnicity, Chinese linguists consider all Hani languages, including Akha, to be dialects of a single language.
Speakers of Akha live in remote mountainous areas where it has developed into a wide-ranging dialect continuum. Dialects from villages separated by as little as ten kilometers may show marked differences. The isolated nature of Akha communities has also resulted in several villages with divergent dialects. Dialects from extreme ends of the continuum and the more divergent dialects are mutually unintelligible.[2]
- ^ Akha at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023)
- ^ Katsura, M. (1973). "Phonemes of the Alu Dialect of Akha". Papers in Southeast Asian Linguistics No.3. 3 (3). Pacific Linguistics, the Australian National University: 35–54.
