Region Sichuan Province Native speakers 81,000 (1999) Glottolog sout2728 | Ethnicity Qiang people ISO 639-3 qxs | |
Language family Sino-Tibetan
Qiangic
Southern Qiang | ||
Southern Qiang is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Qiangic branch spoken by approximately 81,300 people along the Minjiang (岷江) river in Sichuan Province, China.
Contents
Unlike its close relative Northern Qiang, Southern Qiang is a tonal language.
Southern Qiang dialects
Southern Qiang is spoken in Li County (in Taoping 桃坪, etc.), Wenchuan County (in Longxi 龙溪, Luobozhai 萝卜寨, Miansi 绵虒, etc.), and parts of Mao County. It consists of seven dialects: Dajishan, Taoping, Longxi, Mianchi, Heihu, Sanlong, and Jiaochang, which are greatly divergent and are not mutually intelligible.
Names seen in the older literature for Southern Qiang dialects include Lofuchai (Lophuchai, Lopu Chai), Wagsod (Wa-gsod, Waszu), and Outside/Outer Mantse (Man-tzŭ).
Liu (1998) adds Sanlong (三龍) and Jiaochang (較場) to the Southern subdialects.
Southern Qiang consonants
Consonants are presented in the table below.
Status
As with many of the Qiangic languages, Southern Qiang is becoming increasingly threatened. Because the education system largely uses Standard Chinese as a medium of instruction for the Qiang people, and as a result of the universal access to schooling and TV, most Wiang children are fluent or even monolingual in Chinese while and increasing percentage cannot speak Qiang.