| Lisu | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ꓡꓲ-ꓢꓴ | ||||
| Spoken in | China, Burma (Myanmar), India, Thailand | |||
| Ethnicity | Lisu | |||
| Native speakers | 770,000 (1987–2000) | |||
| Language family | ||||
| Writing system | Fraser Alphabet | |||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language in | Weixi Lisu Autonomous County, Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture (PRC) | |||
| Regulated by | No official regulation | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | lis | |||
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Lisu (Lisu: ꓡꓲ-ꓢꓴ; Burmese: လီဆူး ဘာသာစကား, pronounced [lìsʰú bàðà zəɡá]) is a tonal Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Yunnan (southwestern China), northern Burma (Myanmar), 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, Kachin, and Yi languages.
Lisu can be split up into three dialects: northern, central, and southern, with northern being the standard.[1]
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Sam Pollard's A-Hmao was adapted to write Lipo, a Central Loloish language (sometimes called Eastern Lisu) spoken by the Lisu people.
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 (later revised and improved with Fraser and various colleagues from the C.I.M.) was Sara Ba Thaw, a polyglot Karen preacher based in Myitkyina, Burma, who belonged to the American Methodist 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 (China) received their newly-printed copies of the Lisu New Testament.
From 1924 to 1930, a Lisu farmer called Ngua-ze-bo (pronounced [ŋua˥ze˧bo˦]; Chinese: 汪忍波/哇忍波) invented the Lisu syllabary (竹书) from Chinese script, Dongba script and Geba script. However, it looks more different from the Chinese script than Chu Nom and Sawndip (Zhuang logograms).
It has in total 1250 glyphs and 880 characters.
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.
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | ||
| Close | i, ɿ | y | ɯ | u | |
| Mid | e | ø | ɤ | o | |
| Open | æ | a | |||
The symbol [ɿ] represents a fricative vowel.
[i] and [ɿ] are in complementary distribution: [ɿ] is only found after palato-alveolars, though an alternate analysis is possible, with the palato-alveolars viewed as allophones of the palatals before [u] and [ɿ].[3] The distinction originates from proto-Lolo–Burmese consonant clusters of the type *kr or *kj, which elsewhere merge, but where Lisu normally develops /i/, they remain distinct with the latter producing the type [tʃɿ], the former the type [tɕi]. Inherited palatal affricates + /i/ also become [tʃɿ].
Lisu has 6 tones: high [˥], mid-high [˦], mid [˧], low [˨˩], rising [˧˥], and low checked [˨˩ˀ].[2]
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palato- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiceless Unaspirated | p | t ts | tʃ | tɕ | k | ʔ |
| Voiceless Aspirated | pʰ | tʰ tsʰ | tʃʰ | tɕʰ | kʰ | |
| Voiced | b | d dz | dʒ | dʑ | ɡ | |
| Voiceless fricative | f | s | ʃ | ɕ | x | h |
| Voiced fricative | v | z | ʒ | ʑ | ɣ | |
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | h̃ | |
| Approximant | w | l ɹ | j |