The Tujia language (Northern Tujia: Bifzivsar, /pi35ʦi55sa21/; Southern Tujia: Mongrzzirhof, /mõ21ʣi21ho35/[citation needed]; simplified Chinese: 土家语; traditional Chinese: 土家語; pinyin: Tǔjiāyǔ) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken natively by the Tujia peopleinHunan Province, China. It is unclassified within the Sino-Tibetan language family, due to pervasive influence from neighboring languages. There are two mutually unintelligible variants, Northern and Southern. Both variants are tonal languages with the tone contoursof/˥˥˧˧˥˨˩/ (55, 53, 35, 21). Northern Tujia has 21 initials, whereas Southern Tujia has 26 (with 5 additional voiced initials). As for the finals, Northern Tujia has 25 and Southern Tujia has 30, 12 of which are used exclusively in loanwords from Chinese. Its verbs 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, the number of speakers was estimated at 70,000 for Northern Tujia (of which about 100 are monolingual)[2] and 1,500 for Southern Tujia,[3] out of an ethnic population of 8 million.[2][3]
Tujia autonyms include /pi35tsi55kʰa21/ (毕孜卡; /pi21tsi21kʰa21/ in Ye 1995) and /mi35tɕi55kʰa33/55/.[4] The Tujia people call their language /pi35tsi55sa21/.[5]
Tujia (土家) literally means 'native people', which is the appellation that the Han Chinese had given to them due to their aboriginal status in the area. The Tujia, on the other hand, call the Han Chinese Kejia (客家), a designation also given to the Hakka people, which means 'guest people'.[4] Tujia is also called "Bizic" by Yulou Zhou.[6]
Tujia is clearly a Sino-Tibetan language, but its position within that family is unclear, due to massive borrowing from other Sino-Tibetan languages, in particular loanwords from Chinese.[7] Although it has been placed with other groups in the past, linguists now generally leave it unclassified.
Tujia can be divided into two different languages: Northern Tujia and Southern Tujia, which have 40% lexical similarity with each other.[8] Almost all Tujia speakers are located in Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. The Northern dialect has the vast majority of speakers, while the Southern dialect is spoken in only 3 villages of Tanxi Township (潭溪镇) in Luxi County.
Southern (Mengzi孟兹): Tanxi Township in Luxi County
The Tujia-speaking areas of Longshan County are mostly located around the Xiche River 洗车河. The variety studied by Tian (1986) is that of Dianfang Township 靛房乡, Longshan County. Ye focuses on the Northern variety of Xinghuo Village 星火村, Miao'ertan Township 苗儿滩镇 (formerly Miaoshi 苗市), Longshan County 龙山县.[5] Peng covers the Northern variety of Yongshun County.[9] Brassett based their Tujia data primarily on the variety of Tasha Township 他砂乡, Longshan County and also partly from Pojiao Township 坡脚乡 and Dianfang Township 靛房乡.[10] Dai focuses on the variety of Xianren Township 仙仁乡, Baojing County. Zhang (2006) covers the Northern Tujia dialect of Duogu village 多谷村, Longshan County and the Southern Tujia dialect of Poluozhai 婆落寨, Luxi County.[4]
Yang Zaibiao reports that Tujia is spoken in over 500 natural villages comprising about 200 administrative villages and 34 townships.[13] The Northern Tujia autonym is pi35tsɿ55kʰa21, and the Southern Tujia autonym is mõ21dzɿ21.[14] Yang covers the two Northern Tujia dialects of Dianfang 靛房 and Xiaolongre 小龙热, and the Southern Tujia dialect of Qieji 且己.
One system of writing Tujia in Latin script is based on Hanyu Pinyin and uses letters as tone markers, namely, x, r, v, f. It was used in some schools in the area as an experiment, but withdrawn from them in the mid-1990s when the funding ceased.[16]
Although only a small percentage of Tujia people speak the Tujia language, Tujia language enthusiasts work hard on to preserve it, both in Hunan and Hubei. According to news reports, two Tujia language instruction books have been published and work continues on a Tujia dictionary. The Tujia language scholar Chu Yongming (储永明) works with children at the Baifusi Ethnic Minorities School (百福司民族小学) in Baifusi Town, Laifeng County, Hubei to promote the language use.[17]
^Bradley, David (2002). "The Subgrouping of Tibeto-Burman". In Beckwith, Christopher I. (ed.). Brill's Tibetan studies library. 2,6: PIATS 2000: Tibetan studies: Leiden 2000 / ed. by Christopher I. Beckwith. Proceedings of the ... seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies. Leiden Köln: Brill. pp. 73–112. ISBN978-90-04-12424-0.
^"China". Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Nineteenth Edition. 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-09-09.
^Zhou, Minglang (2003). Multilingualism in China: the politics of writing reforms for minority languages, 1949-2002. Contributions to the sociology of language. Berlin ; New York: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 128–130. ISBN978-3-11-017896-8.
Brassett, Philip; Brassett, Cecilia; Lu, Meiyan (2006). The Tujia language. Languages of the World/Materials. Vol. 455. Munich: Lincom Europa. ISBN9783895869952.
Chen, Kang [陈康] (2006). 土家语研究 [A Study of Tujia]. Beijing: Minzu University.
Dai, Qinxia [戴庆厦] (2005). 仙仁土家语研究 [A Study of Xianren Tujia]. Beijing: Minzu University.
Peng, Bo [彭勃] (1998). 土家语研究及实录 [Tujiayu yanjiu ji shilu]. Yongshun County Ethnic Affairs Bureau [永顺县民族事务委员会].
Tian, Desheng [田德生] (1986). 土家语简志 [A sketch of Tujia]. Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House [民族出版社].
Ye, Deshu [叶德书] (1995). 土家语研究 [A Study of Tujia]. Jishou: Jishou University Xiang-Chu Culture Research Institute 吉首大学湘楚文化研究所.
Yang, Zaibiao [杨再彪] (2011). 湖南西部四种濒危语言调查] [Four endangered languages of Hunan province]. Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House [民族出版社].
Yao, Yuanshen [姚元森] (2013). 母语存留区龙山坡脚的土家语口语 [Muyu cunliuqu Longshan Pojiao de Tujiayu kouyu]. Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House [民族出版社].
Xiang, Kuiyi [向魁益] (2012). 保靖县土家语实录 [Baojing Tujiayu shilu]. Hunan Normal University Press [湖南师范大学出版社].
Zhang, Jun [张军] (2006). 土家语语音硏究 [Phonological study of the Tujia language] (Ph.D. dissertation). Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. hdl:1783.1/2836.
Zhou, Yulou; Hill, Nathan W. (2021), A collection of North Tujia (Bifzivsar 北部土家语) vocabulary and textual passages for use in NLP (Data set), doi:10.5281/zenodo.4447924
