Longjia language


Longjia is a Sino-Tibetan language of Guizhou, China related to Caijia and Luren. Longjia may already be extinct.
The Longjia people now speak Southwestern Mandarin, though they used to speak their own language, and have had a long presence in western Guizhou. According to the Guizhou Ethnic Gazetteer, the Longjia language was spoken in Dafang County, Qianxi County, and Puding County. It is reportedly most similar to Caijia, and has many Old Chinese loanwords.

Classification

Guizhou shows that Longjia is closely related to Caijia and Luren. However, the classification of Caijia within Sino-Tibetan is uncertain. Zhengzhang suggests that Caijia and Bai are sister languages, while Sagart argues that Caijia is Sinitic and a close relative of Waxiang.

Dialects

The following dialects of Longjia have been described.
The following comparative word list of three Longjia dialects is from Guizhou. Guizhou notes that the dialect of Jiangyizhai 讲义寨 is divergent, while the dialects of Pojiao 坡脚 and Huaxi 花溪 are more closely related to each other.
English glossChinese glossPojiao 坡脚Huaxi 花溪Jiangyizhai 讲义寨
cattle牛
to eat吃
dog狗
pig猪
chicken鸡
rice 稻谷
water水
big大
two二
four四
meat肉;

Phonology

The Puding County Almanac reports that the Longjia language has 38 onsets and 22 rimes. The Bijie County Almanac reports that there are many prenasalized onsets. In Dafang County, the autonym is Songlibao 松立保.

Nanjinghua

The Nanjing people have usually been classified with the Longjia people, and claim to be descendants of soldiers from the Nanjing area who had intermarried with the local Longjia in Guizhou. Their language is known as Nanjinghua, which is probably now functionally extinct.
In Jianxinhe village 建新河村, Kunzhai Township 昆寨乡, Nayong County, Guizhou Province, the phrase suo55 mu33 ‘eat rice’ was elicited from an elderly rememberer of Nanjinghua. As suo55 is derived from Proto-Tibeto-Burman *dzya ‘to eat’, this points to Nanjinghua having an SVO word order like Caijia, Longjia, Bai, and Sinitic languages.