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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.

Phonology

The Akha language, along with the dialect spoken in Alu village, 55 kilometers northwest of Chiang Rai city in Chiang Rai Province, Thailand is described below. Katsura conducted his study during the late 1960s. With a population of 400 it was, at the time, one of the largest Akha villages in Northern Thailand and was still growing as a result of cross-border migration from Burma. The Akha in Alu spoke no Standard Thai and communicated with outsiders using either Lahu Na or Shan.

Standard Akha has 25 or 26 consonants, and the Alu dialect has 23 or 24 consonants depending on how the syllabic nasal is analyzed. The /m̩/, realized variously as or , can be analyzed as a separate single consonant or as sequences of /ʔm/ and /hm/. Katsura chose the latter but listed the /m/ component of the syllabic consonant with the vowels.

1. /ʔ/ is only heard initially within the absence of a consonant before a vowel

1. Akha /ʔ/ is often described as glottal "tension" rather than a true stop

Any consonant may begin a syllable, but native Akha syllables which don't end in a vowel may only end in either -m or -ɔŋ. A few loan words have been noted that end in -aŋ or -aj. In the case of a nasal coda, some vowels become nasalized. Alu Akha distinguishes ten vowel qualities, contrasting rounded and unrounded back vowels at three heights while only the mid front vowels contrast roundness.

Three vowels, /u/, /ɔ/ and /ɯ/, show marked nasalization when followed by a nasal consonant becoming /ũ/, /ɔ̃/ and /ɯ̃/, respectively.

There are three tones: high, mid and low. Laryngealized vowels commonly occur with mid and low tone, but only rarely with high tone (mostly in loan words and personal names). There are no contour tones. Syllabic occurs with all three plain tones and laryngealized with the two common tones.

Grammar

Like many other Tibeto-Burman languages, the basic word order of Akha is agent-object-verb (SOV). It is a topic-prominent language where the marking of agents are not obligatory and the noun phrase is often topicalized. Also, serial verb constructions and sentence-final particles are frequently used in the sentences.

The noun phrase

The basic order of the Akha noun phrase is noun-adjective-demonstrative-pronoun-numeral-classifier. Grammatical relations and semantic roles may be marked by postpositional particles.

Evidentiality and Egophoricity

Some of the Akha sentence-final particles mark evidentiality and/or egophoricity. For instance, the particle ŋá expresses inference from what the speaker saw.

In interrogative sentences, má or mɛ́ is used for confirmation; the same particles in the answer express information that the speaker knows for sure.

àkhà

má

ló?

àkhà má ló?

"Are you an Akha?"

àkhà

má.

àkhà má.

"Yes, I am."

àkhà

mɛ́

ló?

àkhà mɛ́ ló?

"Is he an Akha?"

àkhà

mɛ́.

àkhà mɛ́.

"Yes, he is."

Note that má appears in the second-person question and the first-person declarative while mɛ́ is used otherwise.

Varieties

Laos

The table below lists the Akha varieties surveyed in Kingsada (1999), Shintani (2001), and Kato (2008), with autonyms and informant birthplaces given as well. All locations are in Phongsaly Province, northern Laos.

Akha Chicho, spoken in Ban Pasang village, Muang Sing district, Luang Namtha Province, is documented in Hayashi (2018). Hayashi (2018: 8) reports that Akha Chicho is mutually intelligible with Akha Buli. Nearby, Akha Kopien (also known as Botche) is spoken in another part of Muang Sing District, Luang Namtha Province, Laos. Some Akha Kopien words are as follows.

There are 15 Akha subgroups in Phongsaly Province, with autonyms given in parentheses.

• Chicho (Akha)
• Chipia (Akha)
• Eupa (Akha)
• Nukui (Akha)
• Nyaeu (Akha)
• Oma (Akha)
• Puli (Akha)
• Kofe (Boche)
• Luma (Luma, Loma)
• Muteun (Moteu)
• Kongsat (Suma)
• Muchi (Wanyeu)
• Phusang (Paza)
• Pana
• Khir

China

In Jinghong City and Menghai County, the two major Hani subgroups are Jiuwei 鸠为 and Jizuo 吉坐. The Jizuo 吉坐 are the largest Hani ethnic subgroup in Jinghong.

The Jiuwei claim to have migrated from Honghe and Mojiang. The Jiuwei live in various villages in Jinghong, including:

• Mengbozhai 勐波寨, Menghan Town 勐罕寨, Jinghong City
• Agupu 阿古普 (also called Manwoke 曼窝科) in Leiwu 类吴, Mengsong Township 勐宋, Jinghong City
• Napazhai 那帕寨 in Damenglong 大勐笼, Jinghong City
• Baiya village 拜牙村 in Menghun 勐混, Menghai County (The Ake 阿克 subgroup lives in Lougu 楼固村, located in Menghun 勐混 as well.)
• Babingzhai 坝丙寨, Xidingshan 西定山, Menghai County

There are also ethnic Hani that are locally called Aini 爱尼 living in 7 villages on Nanlin Mountain 南林山 of southwestern Jinghong, namely Manbage 曼八阁, Manjinglong 曼景龙, Manjingnan 曼景囡, Mangudu 曼固独, Manbaqi 曼把奇, Manbasan 曼巴伞, and Manjingmai 曼景卖.

See also

• Akha comparative vocabulary list (Wiktionary)

References

1. Akha at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023)
2. ^ 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.
3. ^ Lewis, Paul (February 1968). "Akha phonology". Anthropological Linguistics. 10 (2). Trustees of Indiana University: 8–18. JSTOR 30029167.
4. ^ Lewis, Paul (1973). "Tone in the Akha Language". Anthropological Linguistics. 15 (4): 183–188. ISSN 0003-5483. JSTOR 30029534.
5. ^ Hansson, Inga-Lill (2003). "Akha". In Graham Thurgood and Randy J. LaPolla (ed.). The Sino-Tibetan Languages. London &New York: Routledge. p. 241.
6. Hansson, Inga-Lill (2003). "Akha". In Graham Thurgood and Randy J. LaPolla (ed.). The Sino-Tibetan Languages. London &New York: Routledge. p. 242.
7. Egerod, Søren (1985). "Typological features in Akha". Linguistics of the Sino-Tibetan area: The state of the art. Papers presented to Paul K. Benedict for his 71st birthday., C-87 (PDF). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 96–104. doi:10.15144/PL-C87.96.
8. San Roque, Lila; Floyd, Simeon; Norcliffe, Elisabeth (2018). "Egophoricity: An introduction". Egophoricity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 1–78. doi:10.1075/tsl.118.01san. ISBN 978-90-272-0699-2. ISSN 0167-7373.
9. ^ Hansson, Inga-Lill (2003). "Akha". In Graham Thurgood and Randy J. LaPolla (ed.). The Sino-Tibetan Languages. London &New York: Routledge. p. 248.
10. ^ Hayashi, Norihiko. 2018. A Phonological Sketch of Akha Chicho: A Lolo-Burmese language of Luang Namtha, Laos. Proceedings of the 51st International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (2018). Kyoto: Kyoto University.
11. Hayashi, Norihiko (2023). A Phonological Sketch of Akha Kopien. 56th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, 10–12 October 2023. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok.
12. Kato, Takashi (2023). Linguistic varieties of Khir in Laos. 56th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, 10–12 October 2023. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok.
13. 云南省编辑委员会编. 2009. "景洪县哈尼族社会调查." In 哈尼族社会历史调查, p.116-119. 民族出版社. ISBN 9787105087754
14. 云南省编辑委员会编. 2009. "景洪县南林山哈尼族社会调查." In 哈尼族社会历史调查, p.109-119. 民族出版社. ISBN 9787105087754

Further reading

• Nishida Tatsuo 西田 龍雄 (1966). アカ語の音素体系: タイ国北部における山地民アカ族の言語の記述的研究 [A Preliminary Report on the Akha Language ―A Language of a Hill Tribe in Northern Thailand]. 音声科学研究 Studia phonologica (in Japanese). 4 (1): 1–36. hdl:2433/52611.

Word lists for language varieties of Laos

• Kingsadā, Thō̜ngphet, and Tadahiko Shintani. 1999. Basic Vocabularies of the Languages Spoken in Phongxaly, Lao P.D.R. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA).
• Shintani, Tadahiko, Ryuichi Kosaka, and Takashi Kato. 2001. Linguistic Survey of Phongxaly, Lao P.D.R. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA).
• Kato, Takashi. 2008. Linguistic Survey of Tibeto-Burman languages in Lao P.D.R. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA).
• Hayashi, Norihiko. 2016. A Phonological Sketch of Akha Buli: A Lolo-Burmese language of Muang Sing, Laos. 神戸市外国語大学外国学研究 92: 67–98.
• Hayashi, Norihiko. 2018. A Phonological Sketch of Akha Chicho: A Lolo-Burmese language of Luang Namtha, Laos. Proceedings of the 51st International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (2018). Kyoto: Kyoto University.

External links

• ELAR archive of Archaic Akha language documentation materials
• Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) archive collection of Akha photos, audio, and texts Akha Language Resource

Links to related articles

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• Southern Loloish languages
• Languages of Yunnan
• Languages of Laos
• Languages of Myanmar
• Languages of Thailand
• Languages of Vietnam