Shixing language

Shixing, also rendered Shuhi, is a Qiangic language of Sichuan, China. Two-thirds of its speakers are monolingual.

Shixing is also known by its Tibetan name Xumi (旭米 Xùmǐ); it is spoken by about 1800 people living by the Shuiluo River 水洛 in Shuiluo Township 水洛乡, Mili Tibetan Autonomous County.

Katia Chirkova reports two varieties.
 * Upper Xumi (autonym: )
 * Lower Xumi (autonym: )

Consonants
Xumi features a very unusual phonemic contrast between voiceless and voiced  alveolo-palatal lateral approximants and voiceless and voiced glottal fricatives.


 * 1) Only in Upper Xumi
 * 2) Only in Lower Xumi

Oral

 * The close and close-mid series are the same in both varieties: . The difference lies in the open-mid and open series; in Upper Xumi, these are, whereas in Lower Xumi, they are.
 * At least in Lower Xumi, is phonetically close-mid.
 * is closer in Upper Xumi ; in addition, the open central vowel is phonetically near-open . For this reason, they may be transcribed with ⟨ɜ⟩ and ⟨ɐ⟩, respectively.
 * The Lower Xumi and  generally correspond to Upper Xumi  and, respectively.  is near-open near-back  and thus similar to the Upper Xumi , but more back.

Nasal

 * Upper Xumi has the following nasal vowels:, as well as the marginal , which occurs only in the word 'on the roof / upstairs'.
 * Lower Xumi has the following nasal vowels:, as well as the marginal , which occurs only in the word 'on the roof / upstairs'.  generally correspond to Upper Xumi , respectively.