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Kathu
Kathu
Thou
Native to	China
Region	Guangnan County
Ethnicity	Yi
Native speakers	5,000 (2007)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Lolo-Burmese Mondzish Kathu; ; ;
Dialects	Kathu; Thou;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ykt
Glottolog	kath1251
ELP	Kathu

Kathu (Chinese: 嘎苏话) is a Lolo-Burmese language of Balong (坝聋), Nanping Township (南屏镇), Guangnan County, Yunnan, China.^[2] The Kathu are locally known as the White Yi (白彝). Wu Zili (2004) estimates that Kathu has a total of more than 7,000 speakers in Guangnan County (including in Dayashao 大牙少^[3]), as well as in Jinping County, Yunnan. Ethnologue mentions a possible presence in Guangxi Province.

A related variety is known as Thou.

Kathu-Thou is notable for having initial consonant clusters, which within the Lolo-Burmese branch are also found in Written Burmese (Old Burmese) and Jinuo (Hsiu 2014:66).^[4] Wu (2004) lists the onset clusters pl, pʰl, bl, ml, kl, kʰl, gl, ql, qʰl, ɢl, ŋl.

Varieties

Hsiu (2014:65)^[4] identifies two varieties, both spoken in Nanping Township (南屏镇).

Kathu (autonym: ka33 θu33), spoken in Anwang village 安王村
Thou (autonym: θou̯53), spoken in Balong village 坝聋村

Classification

Kathu vocabulary is largely similar to those of other Mondzish languages. However, there are various words that do not appear to be of Lolo-Burmese origin, and are derived from an unknown Tibeto-Burman branch (Hsiu 2014).^[4] Hsiu (2014) suggests that Kathu could be added to George van Driem's list of Trans-Himalayan "fallen leaves."

Bradley (1997)^[5] classified Kathu as a Northern Loloish language, while Bradley (2007)^[6] classified it as a Southeastern Loloish language. However, Pelkey (2011:458)^[7] notes that Kathu and Mo'ang are not Southeastern Loloish languages.

References

^ Kathu at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2018-12-30. Retrieved 2018-12-30.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2017-09-14. Retrieved 2015-09-10.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^ ^a ^b ^c Hsiu, Andrew. 2014. "Mondzish: a new subgroup of Lolo-Burmese Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine". In Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics (IsCLL-14). Taipei: Academia Sinica.
^ Bradley, David. 1997. "Tibeto-Burman languages and classification". In Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas, Papers in South East Asian linguistics. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
^ Bradley, David. 2007. East and Southeast Asia. In Moseley, Christopher (ed.), Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages, 349-424. London & New York: Routledge.
^ Pelkey, Jamin. 2011. Dialectology as Dialectic: Interpreting Phula Variation. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Wu Zili [武自立]. 2004. "Gasu language [嘎僳话]". In Studies on selected languages of Yunnan [云南特殊语言研究], 486-513. Kunming: Yunnan People's Press [云南民族出版社]. ISBN 7536730624