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| Qiang | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | Sichuan Province |
| Ethnicity | Qiang people |
| Linguistic classification | Sino-Tibetan
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| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | qian1264 |
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Qiang language, calledRma (尔玛) orRme[1] by its speakers, and formerly spelledKʻiang, is aSino-Tibetanlanguage cluster of theQiangic branch spoken by approximately 140,000 people in north-centralSichuan Province,China.
Qiang consists of:
There has been two phonetic writing system for Qiang commissioned by PRC authorities, both based on theLatin-script alphabet. The first design was commissioned centrally in 1958 following early PRC work ondistinguishing minority ethnic groups in China, but was never officially promoted. The second system, known as theQiang Phonetic Alphabet Scheme (羌族拼音文字方案;Qiāngzú Pīnyīn Wénzì Fāng'àn) was commissioned by the local government ofNgawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture and the provincial Ethnic Affairs Commission (EAC) of Sichuan in 1989. Qiang Phonetic Alphabet Scheme uses 26 standardEnglish alphabet letters, and is a standardised form based on theQugu Qiang dialect, which belongs to the Northern dialect area but roughly situated at linguistic middle point between the two dialects.[2]
Qiang Phonetic Alphabet Scheme was completed in late 1990 and was approved for trial operation by Sichuan provincial government in 1991, in tandem with recommending the Scheme for official approval by theNational Ethnic Affairs Commission (NEAC) in 1991. In 1993, the NEAC requestedChinese Academy of Social Sciences to organise an academic review, which concluded favourably, but NEAC only informed their approval of the Scheme to the provincial EAC by telephone. Qiang Phonetic Alphabet Scheme never ended up being officially published by NEAC or other national authorities thereafter, although the Scheme was acknowledged as legitimate in one written report from NEAC to the central government in 1999.[3]
In 2015,Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County government commissioned a Qiang language graded reader for schools, which uses Qiang Phonetic Alphabet Scheme.[4]
In 2019, a local TV station atMaoxian county started weekly news programme using the Qiang language and the Latin-based alphabet.[5]
In 2017, Wei Jiuqiao (魏久乔) finalised their design of theRma script.[6] There is no published information as to whether the script is compatible with both theNorthern Qiang language and theSouthern Qiang language or if it is only compatible with one of the languages. In 2022, preliminary proposal was made to encode this system in the Universal Character Set ofUnicode.[7]
 b /p/ |  p /pʰ/ |  bb /b/ |  m /m/ |  f /f/ |  w /w/ |  wf /v/ |
 d /t/ |  t /tʰ/ |  dd /d/ |  n /n/ |  lh /ɬ/ |  l /l/ |  lr /lʴ/ |
 g /k/ |  k /kʰ/ |  gg /ɡ/ |  ng /ŋ/ |  h /h/ |  hh /ɣ/ | — |
 j /tɕ/ |  q /tɕʰ/ |  jj /dʑ/ |  x /ɕ/ |  xx /ʑ/ |  y /j/ | — |
 gv /q/ |  kv /qʰ/ |  v /χ/ |  vh /ɦ/ |  vv /ʁ/ | — | — |
 z /ts/ |  c /tsʰ/ |  zz /dz/ |  s /s/ |  ss /z/ | — | — |
 zh /tʂ/ |  ch /tʂʰ/ |  dh /dʐ/ |  sh /ʂ/ |  rr /ʐ/ | — | — |
 a /a/ |  ae /æ/ |  ea /e/ |  u /u/ |  e /ə/ |  nn /◌̃/ |
 i /i/ |  ü /y/ |  o /o/ |  /ʔ/ |  r /ʴ/ | — |
Sims (2016)[8] gives the following classification for the "Qiangish" (or "Rma") languages, which includeNorthern Qiang andSouthern Qiang. Individual dialects are highlighted initalics.
Sims (2017)[9] reconstructs tones for Proto-Rma (alternatively called Proto-Qiangish), proposing that the lack of tones inNorthern Qiang is due to Tibetan influence. High tones and low tones are reconstructed for Proto-Rma, as well as for Proto-Prinmi.
Sino-Tibetan branches | |||||
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| WesternHimalayas (Himachal, Uttarakhand,Nepal,Sikkim) |
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| EasternHimalayas (Tibet,Bhutan,Arunachal) | |||||
| Myanmar and Indo- Burmese border |
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| East andSoutheast Asia |
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| Dubious (possible isolates,Arunachal) |
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| Proposed groupings | |||||
| Proto-languages | |||||
Italics indicates single languages that are also considered to be separate branches. | |||||