The Khatso Language
Khatso does not have a writing system, so Chinese characters are used for writing.
Even before the Khatso regularly used Mandarin, Chinese characters were used in a
decorative way. In this old mural, the word fu ‘blessings’ is written to resemble two cranes, which also symbolize good fortune.
Khatso 喀卓语 [k?a??tso??t??i??; Kazhuoyu in Mandarin Chinese], is an endangered language that is spoken in a single farming village, called Xingmeng 兴蒙, in Yunnan 云南 Province, China. The Khatso people, who number about 5600, are descendants of the Mongol soldiers Kublai Khan brought to Yunnan in the 13th century, and they still identify as Mongol today. There appears to be nothing Mongolic about the language, however. It is now considered part of the Ngwi (or Yi 彝) sub-group of the Tibeto-Burman language family (Bradley 1997, Matisoff 2003), which is a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Though mutually unintelligible, Khatso is thus a distant relative of Mandarin Chinese.
Typologically, Khatso is broadly similar to the other Ngwi languages in Yunnan (Bradley 2012; Donlay 2019; Mu 2002). It is tonal, with eight distinct contour tones: three level, two rising, two falling and a low falling-rising tone. Syllable structure is typically CV, but a syllable can minimally contain a single continuant, such as a vowel or nasal. The basic lexicon largely consists of monosyllabic and disyllabic words, but reduplication and compounding may produce words of three or more syllables. There is a rich noun classifier system, and bare classifiers are used to mark number and specific reference. Khatso is a highly analytic language with little morphology. Aspect is conveyed through post-verbal and phrase-final particles. Serial verb constructions are also frequent. At the phrase level, Khatso is an APV (SOV) language, though word order is flexible and given arguments are typically omitted. Many of the particles and constructions in the language are multifunctional, allowing them to be interpreted in several, often very different, ways. Pragmatics, including real world knowledge, is required to resolve the intended meaning of these structures in discourse.
Over the past several decades bilingualism in Mandarin Chinese has changed the use of Khatso in the village. In certain domains Mandarin may be more commonly used than Khatso, such as government services or medical clinics. Education has been a driving force in the spread of bilingualism, since only Mandarin is used in the classroom. And attending junior high, which is obligatory in China, requires all Khatso students to leave the village for boarding schools where they live in all-Chinese environments. At the urging of teachers, most parents now purposely teach children Mandarin as their first language (Dai 2008). Moreover, Khatso has no writing system, so Chinese must be used for any written medium. As a result, the language is classified as endangered by both Ethnologue (Lewis, Simons and Fennig 2013) and UNESCO (Moseley 2010).
The Khatso language has been studied by only a handful of linguists to date. Published works include a few basic descriptions (Dai, Liu and Fu 1987), a lexicon (Wang 2008), discussions of its place in the language family (He 1989, 1998), a grammar sketch (Mu 2002), and a survey of language use (Dai 2008). This project has produced the only comprehensive description of the language to date (Donlay 2019), and also the only one in English, which is based on an analysis of dozens of hours of natural spoken Khatso from a variety of genres.
My collaboration with the Khatso, which is ongoing, has resulted in a several publications (Donlay 2019, 2017a, 2017b), as listed below. This website makes available select recordings and transcriptions of Khatso as spoken in everyday life. Specifically, four recordings are included here: Sewing, Dance Parties, History, and Weeds.
Further Reading
Bradley, David. 2012. The characteristics of the Burmic family of Tibeto-Burman. Language and Linguistics 13.171–192.
Bradley, David. 1997. Tibeto-Burman languages and classification. In David Bradley (ed.), Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas, 1–72. Canberra: Australian National University.
Dai, Qingxia 戴庆夏, Liu Juhuang 刘菊黄 and Fu Ailan 傅爱兰. 1987. Yunnan mengguzu gazhuoyu yanjiu 云南蒙古族嘎卓语研究 [Yunnan Mongolian Khatso language study]. Yuyan Yanjiu 语言研究 [Studies in Language and Linguistics] 1.151-175.
Dai, Qingxia 戴庆夏. 2008. Yunnan mengguzu gazhuoren yuyan shiyong xianzhuang jiqi yanbian 云南蒙古族喀卓人语言使用现状及其演变 [Language use and its evolution among the Yunnan Mongolian Kazhuo people]. Biijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan.
Donlay, Chris. 2019 A grammar of Khatso. Mouton Grammar Library. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Donlay, Chris. 2017a. Family group classifiers in Khatso. Sociohistorical linguistics in Southeast Asia: New horizons for Tibeto-Burman studies in honor of David Bradley, ed. by Jamin Pelkey and Picus Sizhi Ding. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 117-133.
Donlay, Chris. 2017b. The role of disambiguation in pragmatic agentivity: Evidence from Khatso. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 40:202-242.
Du, Yuting 杜玉亭 and Chen Lüfan 陈吕范. 1976. Yunnan mengguzu jianshi 云南蒙古族简史[A brief history of the Yunnan Mongolians]. Yunnan mengguzu云南蒙古族 [Yunnan Mongolians], 9-14. Hohhot: Inner Mongolia Teacher’s College.
Hasieerdun 哈斯额尔敦. 1976. Yunnan mengguzu yuyan chutan云南蒙古族语言初探 [A first exploration of the Yunnan Mongolian language]. Yunnan mengguzu 云南蒙古族 [Yunnan Mongolians], 15-18. Hohhot: Inner Mongolia Teacher’s College.
He, Jiren 和即仁. 1989. Yunnan mengguzu yuyan jiqi xishu wenti 云南蒙古族语言及其系属问题 [Yunnan Mongolian and the classification question]. Minzu Yuwen 民族语文 [Minority Languages of China] 5.25-36.
He, Jiren 和即仁. 1998. Guanyu yunnan mengguzu kazhuoyude xingcheng 对于云南蒙古族卡卓语的形成 [About the formation of Yunnan Mongolian Kazhuo]. Minzu Yuwen 民族语文 [Minority Languages of China] 4.51-54.
Huang, Bufan黄布凡 (ed.) 1992. Zangmianyuzu yuyan cihui 藏缅语族语言词汇 [A Tibeto-Burman lexicon]. Beijing: Zhongyang Minzu Xueyuan Chubanshe.
Ju, Namkung (ed.) 1996. Phonological inventories of Tibeto-Burman languages. Berkeley: Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus Project.
Lama, Ziwo Qiu Fuyuan. 2012. Subgrouping of Nisoic (Yi) languages: A study from the perspectives of shared innovation and phylogenetic estimation. Arlington: University of Texas at Arlington, ms.
Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.) 2013. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Seventeenth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online: http://www.ethnologue.com.
Lin, Shezhi 林舍执. 1976. Lingcheng fenghuangde renmen – Yunnan mengguzu jianj1 凌乘凤凰的人们 一 云南蒙古族简记 [Approaching the phoenix – Brief notes on Yunnan Mongolians]. Yunnan mengguzu 云南蒙古族 [Yunnan Mongolians], 1-8. Hohhot: Inner Mongolia Teacher’s College.
Ma, Shiwen 马世雯. 2000. Mengguzu wenhuashi 蒙古族文化史 [Mongolian cultural history]. Kunmíng: Yunnan Renmin Chubanshe.
Matisoff, James. 2003. Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and philosophy of Sino-Tibetan reconstruction. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Moseley, Christopher (ed.) 2010. Atlas of the world’s languages in danger. Paris: UNESCO Publishing. Online:
Mu, Shihua 木仕华. 2002. Kazhuoyu yanjiu 卡卓语研究 [A study of Kazhuo]. Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe.
Schwarz, Henry G. 1984. Some notes on the Mongols of Yunnan. Central Asiatic Journal 28.100-118.
Sneath, David D. 1999. Some notes on a visit to a ‘Mongolian’ village in Yunnan, China. Inner Asia 1:121-130.
Wang, Licai 王立才. 2008. Yunnan Tonghai Xingmeng Mengguzu Kazhuoyu 云南通海兴蒙蒙古族喀卓语 [Yunnan Tonghai Xingmeng Mongolian Kazhuo]. Xingmeng: Tonghai Mongolian Nationality Cultural Research and Inheritance Protection Center.
Yunnan mengguzu 云南蒙古族 [Yunnan Mongolians]. 1976. Hohhot: Inner Mongolia Teacher’s College.
