Katso, also known as Kazhuo or Khatso (autonyms: ', '; ), is a Loloish language of Xingmeng Township (å ´èÂÂ乡), Tonghai County, Yunnan, China. The speakers are officially classified as ethnic Mongols, although they speak a Loloish language. Over 99% of the residents township speak Katso, and Katso is used as a means of daily communication, though it is fading amongst younger speakers.
Katso speakers call themselves ' (å¡åÂÂ) or ' (Ã¥ÂÂÃ¥ÂÂ) (Kazhuoyu Yanjiu).
Katso is young, being no older than 750 years old. Lama (2012) lists the following sound changes from Proto-Loloish as Kazhuoish innovations.
The consonants for Katso according to Donlay (2019) are as follows:
Consonants may not appear as clusters, and there are no coda consonants in Katso. The consonants /m/ and /Ã Â/ can serve as syllable nuclei. Some authors like Mu (2002) and Dai (2008) describe an additional phoneme //.
Katso does not exhibit certain vowel qualities common in other Loloish languages like nasal vowels or the laryngeally-constricted vowels found in Nuosu.
The two fricated vowels, /zé/ (transcribed as /ÿ/ in Sinologist convention) and /vé/ are described by Donlay (2019) as being a high central apical vowel and a high central fricative vowel respectively. The two both exhibit high degrees of turbulence and frication. The phoneme /zé/ may only occur after /s, z, ts, tsð/, and contrasts with /i/ (see tszéâµó "basket" / tsiâµó "to cut (with scissors)". The high central fricative /vé/, compared to its fricative counterpart /v/, is pronounced with the articulators more open forming a more resonant quality. In some instances it may lose sufficient frication to be similar to [] or [].
Donlay identifies 8 diphthongs, /iÃÂ ia io ÃÂi uo ua ui au/ and two triphthongs /iau uÃÂi uai/, out of which /io/, /ia/, and /uai/ mainly occur in loanwords from Chinese.
Katso has eight tones, three level tonemes (55, 44, 33), two rising tones (35, 24), two falling tones (53, 31) and a "peaking" low-falling-rising tone. The 44 toneme only occurs in a scant few words, mostly of Mandarin Chinese origin.
https://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/10911