Luish languages


The Luish, Asakian, or Sak languages are a group of Sino-Tibetan languages belonging to the Sal branch. They are spoken in Burma and Bangladesh, and consist of the Sak, Kadu, and Ganan languages. In recent years, Luish languages have been influenced by Burmese and Chakma Bengali.
Although Luish languages are now widely scattered and spoken by relatively small populations, Luce suggests that the Luish languages were “once spread over the whole north of Burma, from Manipur perhaps to northern Yunnan.”
Matisoff proposes the name Asakian, since Lui or Loi were used by the Meithei to refer to slaves.

Extinct languages

Matisoff has demonstrated that the extinct Andro, Sengmai, and Chairel languages of Manipur are also Luish languages.
Andro, Sengmai, and Chairel are extinct and known only from a glossary recorded in 1859, their speakers having switched to Meitei.
There are also various unattested varieties of Lui or Loi mentioned in nineteenth-century accounts that appear to be Luish varieties.
It is uncertain whether the extinct Pyu language of central Myanmar is a Luish language.
Benedict and Shafer had classified the extinct Taman language of northern Myanmar as part of the Luish branch, but it has since been shown by Keisuke Huziwara to be a non-Luish language, possibly a separate branch of Tibeto-Burman.

Classification

Matisoff, citing Huziwara, provides the following Stammbaum classification for the Asakian branch.
;Asakian
Proto-Luish has been reconstructed by Huziwara, with additional Proto-Luish lexical reconstructions by Matisoff. Like Proto-Austroasiatic and Jingpho, Proto-Luish has a sesquisyllabic syllable structure.
Proto-Luish reconstructions by Huziwara, can be found at Wiktionary's.