Ebook: Naxi (Naish)

In: Rint Sybesma, Wolfgang Behr, Zev Handel & C.T. James Huang (eds.), Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics. Leiden: Brill, 2013. — 23 p.‘Naxi’ (Nàxī 納西) is commonly used in Chinese scholarship as a cover term for a range of language varieties related to the Naxi language as spoken in Lìjiāng 麗江, in Northwestern Yunnan. The same usage was followed until recently in the Ethnologue inventory of languages (code: NBF). The diversity of this set of ‘dialects’ or ‘languages’ is increasingly recognized, however; witness the creation of two distinct entries in Ethnologue as from May 2011: NXQ for Lijiang Naxi (‘Naxi proper’), and NRU for Na/Narua. The latter variety is also referred to as Mósuō 摩梭, taking up a name formerly used for Naxi in Chinese chronicles, whose textually-attested variant forms include Mósuō 摩娑, Móshā 摩沙, Móxiē 麼些, Móxiē 磨些 and Mòxiē 末些 (see Bacot 1913; Fu Maoji 1940; Jacques and Michaud 2011). The technical term ‘Naish’, based on the endonym [nɑ], is used here for this entire low-level grouping within Sino-Tibetan, i.e. covering the same speech varieties as ‘Naxi dialects’ (Nàxīyǔ fāngyán 纳西语方言) in Chinese scholarship, and as the former language code NBF.