Lahu Language - Dialects

Dialects

A few dialects are noted, known by a variety of names:

• Lahu Na (Black Lahu, Musser Dam, Northern Lahu, Loheirn)
• Lahu Shi (Yellow Lahu, Kutsung)
• Lahu Nyi (Red Lahu, Southern Lahu, Musseh Daeng, Luhishi, Luhushi), Shehleh
• Lahu Shehleh

Traditionally Lahu folk taxonomy splits the Lahu people into the two groups of Black Lahu and Yellow Lahu; Red Lahu and White Lahu are new dialect clusters originating in messianic movements within the past few centuries. Black Lahu is the standard dialect in China, as well as the lingua franca among different groups of Lahu in Thailand. However, it is intelligible to speakers of Yellow Lahu only with some difficulty.

Based on the numbers of shared lexical items, Bradley (1979) classifies the Lahu dialects as follows:

Common Lahu

• Black Lahu
  • Shehleh
  • (Core)
    • Black Lahu proper
    • Red Lahu
• Yellow Lahu
  • Bakeo
  • Banlan

Lama (2012) gives the following tentative classification for what he calls Lahoid.

Lahoid

• Lahu-Xi (Yellow Lahu)
• (Black Lahu cluster)
  • Lahu-Na (Black Lahu)
  • Lahu-Ni (Red Lahu)
  • Lahu-Pu (White Lahu)
  • Lahu-Shehleh

Lama (2012) lists the following sound changes from Proto-Loloish as Lahu innovations.

• *s-l- > x-
• *z- > ʣ-
• *ŋ- > x-