Qiang branch languages are all distributed in China, with 12 languages and 1 language. They are Qiang people, Pumi people, Muya people (formerly known as "Yao Mi"), Jia Rong people, Ergong people (Daofu), Zhayu people (Zaba, Zaba), Queyu people, Guiqiong people (Yutong), (Lisu people, Duoxu people), Namuyi people and Shixing people. Qiang branch itself can be divided into north branch and south branch, the former is greatly influenced by Tibetan branch, and the latter is greatly influenced by Yi branch. Some scholars believe that Jiarong language should belong to the Tibetan branch, while others believe that Xixia language should belong to the Yi branch.
Qiang branch language has obvious characteristics of * * * *: Phonetically, there are abundant consonants, single consonant with uvula stop and fricative, four sets of fricative, vowel band length, tongue rolling and nasal, but rarely tight, vowels are generally lost, and the tone has little influence; Grammatically, personal pronouns have case, and quantifiers and numerals are combined in quantitative form, but they are not as rich as Yi branches. Verbs have grammatical categories such as person, number, aspect, state, form and potential, which are represented by prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes and suffixes that express the same grammatical meaning in different languages are obviously similar in origin, adjectives have no hierarchical category, and structural auxiliary words are richer than Tibetan branches. In terms of vocabulary, there are many Chinese loanwords and Tibetan loanwords, and the homology between languages is generally around 20%, up to 30%. Pumi language: it is divided into two dialect areas, north and south. Southern dialects are distributed in Lanping County, Weixi County, Yongsheng County, Lijiang County and the southern part of Xinyingpan Township in ninglang county. Northern dialects are distributed in Muli, Yanyuan and Jiulong counties, north of Xinyingpan, ninglang county, Sichuan.
Muya: It is spoken by about12,000 people in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. It is mainly distributed in Kangding, Jiulong and Yajiang counties, and is divided into east and west dialect areas. People in the eastern dialect area call themselves "mules", and their language is greatly influenced by Chinese. People in western dialect areas call themselves "muya", and their language is greatly influenced by Tibetan.
Jiarong language is a very primitive language and a "living fossil" of Sino-Tibetan language family, which is popular in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province. It retains some phonetic forms of the original Sino-Tibetan language, such as complex consonants, word formation and so on. Jia Rong language is of great significance for understanding the pronunciation and grammar of ancient Chinese.
Ergong dialect: It is mainly distributed in parts of Danba, Daofu, Xinlong and Luhuo counties in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. The people who speak this language call themselves Bubba or Bubba, the Tibetan language is called Daowuge, and the academic world is called Ergong, with about 35,000 people. Daofu has four dialect areas, namely Xianshui dialect area, Shangjia dialect area, Shachong dialect area and Kongse dialect area.
Zaba: Also known as Zaba, Zaba. People who speak this language call themselves "Zha" or "Zaba", and there are about 15000 people, who are distributed in Daofu, Yajiang, Kangding and Jiulong counties of Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. The phonetic differences of Zaba language in different places are great, and its local language area needs further investigation and study.
Guiqiong dialect: It is mainly distributed in Shijie, Lianshe, Qianxi, Maibeng and Sanhe in Yutong District of Kangding County, with a population of about 7,000. People who speak this language call themselves "Geqiang", Tibetan calls it "evil children's songs" and academic circles call it "Guiqiong language".
Ersu: There are great internal differences and it is divided into three dialect areas: East, Middle and West. Residents who speak eastern dialects call themselves Sur or Su Ru. Residents who speak the central dialect call themselves "Duoxu". Western dialects are divided into two categories: Chaer dialect (people who speak this language call themselves Pu, Rouge or Rouge) and Li Rufang dialect (people who speak this language call themselves Luge). The population using Sur is about 16 100? .
Namuyi: It is a language different from Tibetan, which is spoken by about 5,000 people in some areas of southwest Sichuan Province. Before liberation, residents who used this language were generally called "Xifan", Mianning, Xichang, Yanyuan and other places called themselves "Na Mu Yi", and Muli and Jiulong called themselves "Na Mu Zi". There are no dialect differences between them, only dialect differences. After a preliminary comparative study, Namu Yi language is the closest to Qiang language, especially compared with Su 'er, Muya, Guiqiong and other languages, with more cognates and similar grammatical features, and many grammatical categories have many similarities in origin.
Shixing Language: Also known as Xumi Language or Xu Mi Tibetan Language, it is distributed in some villages in Shuiluo Township, Wachang District, Muli Tibetan Autonomous County, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, with about 2,000 users. Fashionable language is a language facing extinction, which has not attracted the attention of many scholars. Only Sun Hongkai (1983), Huang Bufan and Ren Zengwangmu (199 1) made a preliminary introduction.
Xixia language: a branch of Qiang language. Qiang people have their own language, belonging to the Qiang branch of Tibetan-Burmese language family of Sino-Tibetan language family. The Qiang people who speak this language call themselves Rimai (pronounced Mei in Sichuan dialect), Mai, Er Miao, Ermayina and Ma, all of which are homonyms in different regions, and the population using Qiang language is about 6.5438+0.2 million. Qiang language is distributed in Maoxian, Wenchuan, Lixian, Songpan and Heishui in Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province, and a few are distributed in Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County of Mianyang City and the northwest of Danba County of Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.
After investigation and study, it is confirmed that Qiang dialect can be divided into two major dialects: North and South. The grammatical forms of northern dialects are more complicated, and more morphological means are used to express grammatical rules than southern dialects. There is little difference between northern dialects and southern dialects. The northern dialect area is close to Tibetan areas, and there are more Tibetan loanwords and words reflecting pastoral life, while the southern dialect area is close to Han areas, and there are more Chinese loanwords and words reflecting agricultural life, and the same word order as Chinese can appear in spoken language. There are nine dialects in northern China, such as Zhenping dialect, Qugu dialect, Huilong dialect, Hei Hu dialect, Weimen dialect, Gu Wei dialect, Cimulin dialect, Mawo dialect and Lu Hua dialect. There are six dialects in southern China, including Yanmen dialect, Longxi dialect, Mianchi dialect, Puxi dialect, Kamm dialect and Taoping dialect.
Northern dialects are mainly distributed in Chibi Soviet Area in the north of Maoxian County, Jiaochang District and Shaba District in the middle, Heihu Township and Yonghe Township, most parts of Heishui County, Zhenjiang District and Rehu District of Songpan County, and parts of Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County. In the 1980s, there were about 90,000 people who spoke northern dialects. It is characterized by vibrato, rich consonants, long vowels, rolled and unvoiced tongue sounds, rich consonant endings, and more vowels with consonant endings, with stress and no tone. Light and heavy sounds have different functions in word formation and configuration, and there are many phonetic changes in word formation or configuration, such as weakening, transposition and alternation of consonants, harmony of vowels and so on. Pronouns in northern dialect have no grammatical category of "case", demonstrative pronouns can only be used as sentence components alone, and verbs have grammatical categories of person, number, time, state, aspect and form.
Southern dialects are mainly distributed in Tonghua District, Xuecheng District, Weizhou District and Mianchi District of Lixian County. In the 1980s, there were about 33,000 people who spoke southern dialects. Southern dialects are characterized by no vibrato [r], most of which are pronounced as [dz] or [l], with few consonants. The compound consonants in northern dialects are mostly monosyllabic in southern dialects, with tones, which can distinguish meaning and form without stress. The vocabulary of southern dialects is very different, and compared with northern dialects, cognates account for a small proportion.
Qiang and Chinese are widely used in southern dialect areas. Along the highway, except for the elderly and adults, there are fewer and fewer young people who can speak Qiang. Qiang language is also widely used in northern dialect areas and remote mountainous areas. Due to the long-term contact with the Han nationality, the Qiang people in the upper reaches of Minjiang River and Jiangkui River have long used Chinese records. In the Middle Ages, Qiang people, under the vigorous advocacy of Yuan Hao of Xixia, created and used Xixia characters in order to seek communication means that were not limited by time and space. Unfortunately, few scholars can interpret Xixia characters. Xixia characters are created according to the essential features of Xixia language, calling themselves "model characters" or "Shu Fan", which belong to ideographic characters, with a total of more than 6,000 words, which are divided into seal script, regular script, running script and cursive script, and also divided into simplified characters and synthetic characters, among which the words with meanings and sounds account for the most, accounting for 80% of the total Xixia characters? About. The phenomenon of saving shapes and sounds is common, and pictographs and signifiers are rare. The Xixia characters were formulated in a short time, which not only showed the wisdom of the Tangut Qiang people, but also opened up a new era for the political, economic and cultural development of Daxia.
Since then, the notices of Xixia literature have been written in new characters. "Xixia Shu" was published for twelve years: "Yuan Haowen asked to make calligraphy, respecting it as a national character, and both arts and sciences in middle schools are easy to make calligraphy." "And the" Fan Academy "was established to train Xixia talents." Xixia literature is not only varied, but also rich in content. There are all kinds of official and folk documents, books on law, history, literature and medicine with high academic value, dictionaries, a large number of Confucian classics and military books translated from Chinese, and many Buddhist scriptures.
However, according to the viewpoint that "writing is a symbol of language and is used to express language", neither Chinese nor Xixia can be regarded as the writing of modern Qiang people, because neither of them can express the language used by modern Qiang people.
Qiang language includes Qiang phonetic symbols and local Qiang language. The phonetic scheme of Qiang nationality was founded in the early 1990s. 199 1 was approved by the Sichuan provincial people's government, 1993 was formally tried by the state ethnic affairs commission, and 1999 confirmed its legal status in a report to the central government by the state ethnic affairs commission.