The Tujia language (Northern Tujia: , ; Southern Tujia: , ; ) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken natively by the Tujia people in Hunan Province, China. It is unclassified within the Sino-Tibetan language family, due to pervasive influence from neighboring languages. There are two mutually unintelligible variants, Northern and Southern. Both variants are tonal languages with the tone contours of (55, 53, 35, 21). Northern Tujia has 21 initials, whereas Southern Tujia has 26 (with 5 additional voiced initials). As for the finals, Northern Tujia has 25 and Southern Tujia has 30, 12 of which are used exclusively in loanwords from Chinese. Its verbs make a distinction of active and passive voices. Its pronouns distinguish the singular and plural numbers along with the basic and possessive cases. As of 2005, the number of speakers was estimated at 70,000 for Northern Tujia (of which about 100 are monolingual) and 1,500 for Southern Tujia, out of an ethnic population of 8 million. Names Tujia autonyms include (; // in Ye 1995) and . The Tujia people call their language . () literally means 'native people', which is the appellation that the Han Chinese had given to them due to their aboriginal status in the area. The Tujia, on the other hand, call the Han Chinese (), a designation also given to the Hakka people, which means 'guest people'. Tujia is also called "Bizic" by Yulou Zhou. Classification Tujia is clearly a Sino-Tibetan language, but its position within that family is unclear, due to massive borrowing from other Sino-Tibetan languages. Although it has been placed with other groups in the past, linguists now generally leave it unclassified. Subdivisions Tujia is divided into two major dialects. Almost all Tujia speakers are located in Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. The Northern dialect has the vast majority of speakers, while the Southern dialect is spoken in only 3 villages of Tanxi Township () in Luxi County. Northern ( ): Baojing County, Longshan County, Guzhang County, Yongshun County () () () Southern ( ): Tanxi Township in Luxi County The Tujia-speaking areas of Longshan County are mostly located around the Xiche River 洗车河. The variety studied by Tian (1986) is that of Dianfang Township 靛房乡, Longshan County. Ye focuses on the Northern variety of Xinghuo Village 星火村, Miao'ertan Township 苗儿滩镇 (formerly Miaoshi 苗市), Longshan County 龙山县. Peng covers the Northern variety of Yongshun County. Brassett based