The Influence of Sichuan Chinese Dialects on the Naxi Language
This paper compares the phonological system of the Yanyuan dialect of Sichuan Chinese with the phonology of Chinese loanwords in the Naxi language, especially its Eastern dialect. It opens with a historical survey tracing the Naxi people's ancestors (recorded historically as Mosha/Mo-xie/Mosuo) from the Jinsha and Yalong river basins of southwestern Sichuan since the Eastern Han, through gradual westward migration into northwestern Yunnan, outlining the modern Western/Eastern dialect split. It then catalogs Naxi's Chinese loanwords by era (early vs. modern) and by word-formation pattern (transliteration-plus-gloss, combined phonetic-semantic translation, pure transliteration), with vocabulary lists spanning kinship terms, everyday objects, and post-1950s political terminology. The core is a detailed phonological comparison of initials, finals, and tones between Yanyuan and Eastern Naxi's loanword layer, showing systematic correspondences that reveal the depth of Sichuan-dialect influence. The paper concludes loanwords are valuable evidence for Naxi-Han historical contact and for reconstructing older Chinese.
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