The Tujia language (Mandarin Chinese: 土家语, Tǔjiā yǔ) is a language spoken natively by the Tujia ethnicity in central China. It is unclassified within the Tibeto-Burman language family, due to pervasive influence from neighboring languages. There are two dialects, one Northern and one Southern. Both dialects are tonal languages with the tone contours of 55, 53, 35 and 21. The Northern dialect has 21 initials, while the Southern dialect has 26 (with 5 additional aspirated initials). As for the finals, the Northern dialect has 25 and the Southern 30, 12 of which are used exclusively in loan words from the Chinese language. Its verb make a distinction of active and passive voices; Its pronouns distinguish the singular and plural numbers along with the basic and possessive cases. According to a 1982 census, its speakers number roughly 200,000.
Classification
Tujia is clearly a Tibeto-Burman language, but its position within that family is unclear, due to massive borrowing from other Tibeto-Burman languages. It has been placed with Loloish and Qiangic, but many leave it unclassified.
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