The Loloish languages, also known as Yi in China and occasionally Ngwi or Nisoic, are a family of fifty to a hundred Sino-Tibetan languages spoken primarily in the Yunnan province of China. They are most closely related to Burmese and its relatives. Both the Loloish and Burmish branches are well defined, as is their superior node, Lolo-Burmese. However, subclassification is more contentious. SIL Ethnologue estimated a total number of 9 million native speakers of Ngwi languages, the largest group being the speakers of Nuosu at 2 million speakers.
Names
Loloish is the traditional name for the family. Some publications avoid the term under the misapprehension that Lolo is pejorative. Lolo is the Chinese rendition of the autonym of the Yi people and it is only pejorative when written with a particular Chinese character, a practice that was prohibited by the Chinese government in the 1950s. David Bradley uses the name Ngwi, which is also used by Ethnologue, and Lama uses Nisoic. Paul K. Benedict coined the term Yipho, from Yi and a common autonym element, but it never gained wide usage.
Internal classification
Bradley (2007)
Loloish was traditionally divided into a northern branch, with Lisu and the numerous Yi languages and a southern branch, with everything else. However, per Bradley and Thurgood there is also a central branch, with languages from both northern and southern. Bradley adds a fourth, southeastern branch.
Lama classified 36 Lolo–Burmese languages based on a computational analysis of shared phonological and lexical innovations. He finds the Mondzish languages to be a separate branch of Lolo-Burmese, which Lama considers to have split off before Burmish did. The rest of the Loloish languages are as follows: The Nisoish, Lisoish, and Kazhuoish clusters are closely related, forming a clade at about the same level as the other five branches of Loloish. Lama's Naxish clade has been classified as Qiangic rather than Loloish by Guillaume Jacques & Alexis Michaud . A Lawoish branch has also been recently proposed. Satterthwaite-Phillips' computational phylogenetic analysis of the Lolo-Burmese languages does support the inclusion of Naxish within Lolo-Burmese, but recognizes Lahoish and Nusoish as coherent language groups that form independent branches of Loloish.
