based on the Burmese alphabet has been developed and is taught to speakers and used in several publications and school books. Phonology The Lisu phonological inventory is as follows. Vowels and the fricative vowel are in complementary distribution: is only found after palato-alveolars, though an alternate analysis is possible, with the palato-alveolars viewed as allophones of the palatals before and . The distinction originates from proto-Lolo–Burmese consonant clusters of the type *kr or *kj, which elsewhere merge, but where Lisu normally develops , they remain distinct with the latter producing the type , the former the type . Inherited palatal affricates + also become . is variable across dialects. It may be either endolabial or exolabial, central or even merged with . The distinction between and is marginal, and both are written in pinyin. Tones Lisu has six tones: high , mid creaky , mid , low , rising and low checked (that is, ). In some dialects the creaky tone is higher than mid tone, in others they are equal. The rising tone is infrequent, but common in baby talk (which has a stereotypical disyllabic low–rising pattern); both high and rising tone are uncommon after voiced consonants. Consonants and are in complementary distribution, with before front vowels. is marginal, occurring in a few words before or . The subdialect Fraser first encountered also distinguishes a retroflex series, , but only before . Medial glides appear before . These are with velars and with bilabials and . The latter consonant (see rhinoglottophilia) has a non-nasal allophone in the imperative particle . is only distinctive before and in some dialects is merged with . In Southern Lisu, the velar plosives become alveopalatal before front vowels. The vowels and trigger an offglide on preceding consonants, so are pronounced . The vowels do not occur initially—or, at least, in initial position they are pronounced . It has been argued that the initial vowels are phonetically , so initial consonants do not need to be posited in such cases (and marginal can be removed from the inventory of native words), or that they are phonemically , with glottal stop. References Works cited Further reading Miyake, Marc. 2011. Unicode 5.2 (not 6.1!): the Old Lisu script. External links Handbook of the Lisu language (1922) Loloish languages Languages of China Languages of India Languages of Myanmar Languages of Thailand