Linguistic Harmony: A Diachronic Study of the Relationship between the Naxi and Chinese Languages in Lijiang's Old Town
Hu Tuo (Lijiang Teachers College, 2019) traces the diachronic relationship between Naxi and Chinese in Lijiang's Old Town from before the Tang dynasty through the present, arguing the two languages coexisted in complementary, harmonious roles rather than one replacing the other. Before the Ming, Naxi was the community's internal language while Chinese served as an external lingua franca among bilingual elites and Dongba priests, supported by documentary and ancient-layer loanword evidence. From the Ming through the Qing, mass Han immigration and the Mu-clan chieftains' policies of assimilation and selective accommodation shaped a division of labor between the languages, with measurable mutual phonological influence (Naxi gained new finals, a low tone, and loanword-only syllables; Lijiang Chinese gained a Naxi-influenced four-tone system and lost nasal finals). Since 1949, Naxi (~58%) and Han (~18%) remain the main populations, with Chinese's role steadily expanding via schooling, media, and tourism while Naxi keeps its family and in-group functions.
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