Namuyi language

Namuyi is a Tibeto-Burman language belonging to the Naic branch, spoken by approximately 10,000 people. It is primarily spoken in southern Sichuan. Namuyi has also been classified as Qiangic by Sun Hongkai and Guillaume Jacques. The eastern and western dialects have low mutual intelligibility. In Sichuan, it is spoken in Muli County and Mianning County. The language is endangered and the number of speakers with fluency is decreasing year by year, as most teenagers do not speak the language, instead speaking the Sichuan dialect of Chinese.

Geographical distribution

Namuyi is a language spoken in the following four villages of southern Sichuan:

' : Dàshuǐ Village 大水村, Mínshèng Township 民胜鄉, Xīchāng City
' : Хiǎngshuǐ Village 響水村, Xiǎngshuǐ Township 響水鄉, Xīchāng City
' : Dōngfēng Village 東風村, Zéyuǎn Township 澤遠鄉, Miǎnníng County
' : Lǎoyā Village 老鴉村, Shābà Town 沙壩鎮, Miǎnníng County

It is also spoken in Muli and Yanyuan of the Liangshan [Yi Autonomous Prefecture|Liangshan Autonomous Prefecture] and Jiulong County in Ganzi Autonomous Prefecture.

Dialects

The Namuyi language is subdivided into two different dialects, the dialect of spoken by the people around Muli, and the dialect of those spoken in Mianning. The dialects differ mainly in phonology, where the Mianning and Yanyuan dialect have few consonant clusters as opposed to the Jiulong and Muli dialect.

Phonology

There are 40 single-consonant initials in the Namuyi language. Namuyi also has ten phonemic vowels, /i/ for , /e/ for , /ɛ/ for , /ɨ/ for /ʉ/ for , /ə/ for , /a/ for , /u/ for , /o/ for , and /ɔ/ for . There is no phonological vowel length, though speakers can lengthen a vowel in the first syllable at times to emphasize a word.