Tujia language

Tujia
Bifzixsar
Mongrzzirhof[citation needed]
Pronunciation/pi35 ʦi55 sa21/
/mõ21 ʣi21 ho35/[citation needed]
Native toNorthwestern Hunan Province, China; Laifeng County, Hubei
Ethnicity8.0 million Tujia (2000 census)[1]
Native speakers
70,000 (2005)[1]
Sino-Tibetan
  • Tibeto-Burman
    • Tujia
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
tji – Northern
tjs – Southern
Glottologtuji1244
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The Tujia language (Northern Tujia: Bifzixsar, /pi35 ʦi55 sa21/; Southern Tujia: Mongrzzirhof, /mõ21 ʣi21 ho35/[citation needed]; simplified Chinese: 土家语; traditional Chinese: 土家語; pinyin: Tǔjiāyǔ) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken natively by the Tujia people in Hunan Province, China. It is unclassified within the Sino-Tibetan language family, due to pervasive influence from neighboring languages. There are two mutually unintelligible variants, Northern and Southern. Both variants are tonal languages with the tone contours of /˥ ˥˧ ˧˥ ˨˩/ (55, 53, 35, 21). Northern Tujia has 21 initials, whereas Southern Tujia has 26 (with 5 additional voiced initials). As for the finals, Northern Tujia has 25 and Southern Tujia has 30, 12 of which are used exclusively in loanwords from Chinese. Its verbs make a distinction of active and passive voices. Its pronouns distinguish the singular and plural numbers along with the basic and possessive cases. As of 2005, the number of speakers was estimated at 70,000 for Northern Tujia (of which about 100 are monolingual)[2] and 1,500 for Southern Tujia,[3] out of an ethnic population of 8 million.[2][3]

  1. ^ a b Northern at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
    Southern at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ a b Tujia, Northern
  3. ^ a b Tujia, Southern