Akha is the language spoken by theAkha people of southern China (Yunnan Province), eastern Burma (Shan State), northern Laos, andnorthern Thailand.

Western scholars group Akha,Hani andHoni into theHani languages, treating all three as separate mutually unintelligible, but closely related, languages. The Hani languages are, in turn, classified in theSouthern Loloish subgroup ofLoloish. Loloish and the Mru languages are closely related and are grouped within Tibeto-Burman as theLolo-Burmese languages.

In accordance with China'sofficial classification of ethnic groups, which groups all speakers of Hani languages into one ethnicity, Chinese linguists consider all Hani languages, including Akha, to be dialects of a single language.

Speakers of Akha live in remote mountainous areas where it has developed into a wide-ranging dialect continuum. Dialects from villages separated by as little as ten kilometers may show marked differences. The isolated nature of Akha communities has also resulted in several villages with divergent dialects. Dialects from extreme ends of the continuum and the more divergent dialects are mutually unintelligible.^[2]

The Akha language, along with the dialect spoken in Alu village, 55 kilometres (34 mi) northwest ofChiang Rai city inChiang Rai Province, Thailand, is described below. Katsura conducted his study during the late 1960s. With a population of 400 it was, at the time, one of the largest Akha villages in Northern Thailand and was still growing as a result of cross-border migration from Burma. The Akha in Alu spoke noStandard Thai and communicated with outsiders using eitherLahu Na orShan.

Standard Akha has 25 or 26 consonants, and the Alu dialect has 23 or 24 consonants depending on how thesyllabic nasal is analyzed. The/m̩/, realized variously as[ˀm] or[m̥], can be analyzed as a separate single consonant or as sequences of /ʔm/ and /hm/. Katsura chose the latter but listed the /m/ component of the syllabic consonant with the vowels.^[2]

Any consonant may begin a syllable, but native Akha syllables which don't end in a vowel may onlyend in either -m or -ɔŋ. A few loan words have been noted that end in -aŋ or -aj. In the case of a nasal coda, some vowels becomenasalized. Alu Akha distinguishes ten vowel qualities, contrasting rounded and unrounded back vowels at three heights while only the mid front vowels contrast roundness.

Three vowels,/u/,/ɔ/ and/ɯ/, show marked nasalization when followed by a nasal consonant becoming/ũ/,/ɔ̃/ and/ɯ̃/, respectively.

There are three tones: high, mid and low. Laryngealized vowels^{[clarification needed]} commonly occur with mid and low tone, but only rarely with high tone (mostly in loan words and personal names). There are no contour tones. Syllabic [m̩] occurs with all three plain tones and laryngealized with the two common tones.^[4]

Like many otherTibeto-Burman languages, the basic word order of Akha isagent-object-verb (SOV).^[5] It is atopic-prominent language where the marking of agents are not obligatory and the noun phrase is often topicalized.^[5] Also,serial verb constructions andsentence-final particles are frequently used in the sentences.^[5]

The basic order of the Akha noun phrase is noun-adjective-demonstrative-pronoun-numeral-classifier.^[5]Grammatical relations andsemantic roles may be marked bypostpositional particles.^[6]

Some of the Akha sentence-final particles markevidentiality and/oregophoricity.^[7][8] For instance, the particleŋá expresses inference from what the speaker saw.^[9]

In interrogative sentences,má ormɛ́ is used for confirmation; the same particles in the answer express information that the speaker knows for sure.^[9]

Note thatmá appears in the second-person question and the first-person declarative whilemɛ́ is used otherwise.

The table below lists the Akha varieties surveyed in Kingsada (1999),Shintani (2001), and Kato (2008), with autonyms and informant birthplaces given as well. All locations are inPhongsaly Province, northernLaos.

Akha Chicho, spoken in Ban Pasang village, Muang Sing district,Luang Namtha Province, is documented in Hayashi (2018).^[10] Hayashi (2018: 8) reports that Akha Chicho is mutually intelligible with Akha Buli. Nearby, Akha Kopien (also known as Botche) is spoken in another part of Muang Sing District, Luang Namtha Province, Laos. Some Akha Kopien words are as follows.^[11]

There are 15 Akha subgroups inPhongsaly Province, with autonyms given in parentheses.^[12]

• Chicho (Akha)
• Chipia (Akha)
• Eupa (Akha)
• Nukui (Akha)
• Nyaeu (Akha)
• Oma (Akha)
• Puli (Akha)
• Kofe (Boche)
• Luma (Luma, Loma)
• Muteun (Moteu)
• Kongsat (Suma)
• Muchi (Wanyeu)
• Phusang (Paza)
• Pana
• Khir

InJinghong City andMenghai County, the two majorHani subgroups are Jiuwei 鸠为 and Jizuo 吉坐.^[13] The Jizuo 吉坐 are the largest Hani ethnic subgroup in Jinghong.

The Jiuwei claim to have migrated fromHonghe andMojiang. The Jiuwei live in various villages in Jinghong, including:

• Mengbozhai 勐波寨, Menghan Town 勐罕寨, Jinghong City
• Agupu 阿古普 (also called Manwoke 曼窝科) in Leiwu 类吴, Mengsong Township 勐宋, Jinghong City
• Napazhai 那帕寨 in Damenglong 大勐笼, Jinghong City
• Baiya village 拜牙村 in Menghun 勐混, Menghai County (TheAke 阿克 subgroup lives in Lougu 楼固村, located in Menghun 勐混 as well.)
• Babingzhai 坝丙寨, Xidingshan 西定山, Menghai County

There are also ethnic Hani that are locally called Aini 爱尼 living in 7 villages on Nanlin Mountain 南林山 of southwesternJinghong, namely Manbage 曼八阁, Manjinglong 曼景龙, Manjingnan 曼景囡, Mangudu 曼固独, Manbaqi 曼把奇, Manbasan 曼巴伞, and Manjingmai 曼景卖.^[14]

Numerous writing systems exist for Akha, including various Latin-based scripts, theBurmese andThai scripts.^[15] Akha was a spoken language until Christian missionaries created various Latin-based writing systems during the 20th century.^[15] The first documented transcription system for Akha was devised in 1927 by Father Portaluppi, an Italian missionary, inKengtung, Burma.^[16] The most commonly used system is a Latin-based script called the "Baptist script," which was invented by Paul Lewis in 1950.^[15] In August 2008, Akha delegates from China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam agreed to develop a common Latin-based orthography for the language.^[16]

• Akha comparative vocabulary list (Wiktionary)

• Nishida Tatsuo 西田 龍雄 (1966).アカ語の音素体系: タイ国北部における山地民アカ族の言語の記述的研究 [A Preliminary Report on the Akha Language ―A Language of a Hill Tribe in Northern Thailand].音声科学研究 Studia phonologica (in Japanese).4 (1):1–36.hdl:2433/52611.

Word lists for language varieties of Laos

• Kingsadā, Thō̜ngphet, andTadahiko Shintani. 1999.Basic Vocabularies of the Languages Spoken in Phongxaly, Lao P.D.R. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA).
• Shintani, Tadahiko, Ryuichi Kosaka, and Takashi Kato. 2001.Linguistic Survey of Phongxaly, Lao P.D.R. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA).
• Kato, Takashi. 2008.Linguistic Survey of Tibeto-Burman languages in Lao P.D.R. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA).
• Hayashi, Norihiko. 2016.A Phonological Sketch of Akha Buli: A Lolo-Burmese language of Muang Sing, Laos. 神戸市外国語大学外国学研究 [Kobe University of Foreign Studies, Foreign Language Studies] 92: 67–98.
• Hayashi, Norihiko. 2018.A Phonological Sketch of Akha Chicho: A Lolo-Burmese language of Luang Namtha, Laos.Proceedings of the 51st International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (2018). Kyoto: Kyoto University.

• ELAR archive ofArchaic Akha language documentation materials
• Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) archive collection of Akha photos, audio, and textsAkha Language Resource

• Southern Loloish languages
• Languages of Yunnan
• Languages of Laos
• Languages of Myanmar
• Languages of Thailand
• Languages of Vietnam

• Pages with plain IPA
• Language articles citing Ethnologue 26
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Wikipedia articles needing clarification from June 2023
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• CS1 uses Japanese-language script (ja)
• CS1 Japanese-language sources (ja)