| Tujia | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | China | |||
| Ethnicity | 8 million Tujia | |||
| Native speakers | 70,000 (2005) | |||
| Language family |
Sino-Tibetan
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | either: tjs – Southern tji – Northern |
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The Tujia language (Chinese: 土家语, pinyin: Tǔjiāyǔ) is a language spoken natively by the Tujia ethnicity in central China. It is unclassified within the Tibeto-Burman language family, due to pervasive influence from neighboring languages. There are two dialects, one Northern and one Southern. Both dialects are tonal languages with the tone contours of ˥ ˥˧ ˧˥ ˨˩. The Northern dialect has 21 initials, while the Southern dialect has 26 (with 5 additional aspirated initials). As for the finals, the Northern dialect has 25 and the Southern 30, 12 of which are used exclusively in loan words from the Chinese language. Its verb 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, its speakers number roughly 70,000, out of an ethnic population of 8 million.
Tujia is clearly a Tibeto-Burman language, but its position within that family is unclear, due to massive borrowing from other Tibeto-Burman languages. It has been placed with Loloish and Qiangic, but many leave it unclassified.
The Tujia have been known as an ethnic minority (historically) without a written language. Yet a succession of ancient undeciphered books with glosses presented in Chinese characters have been found in the Youyang Tujia habitation straddling the borders of Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou Province, and Chongqing City.[1] Modern Tujia is written in Latin script.