Personal communication on Ersu
Chirkova, Katia. 2015. Personal communication on Ersu (November 12).
Threatened
100 percent certain, based on the evidence available
~13000
Native Speakers Worldwide
Speaker Number Trends
Speaker Number Trend 2
A majority of community members speak the language. Speaker numbers are gradually decreasing.
2
Domains of Use
Domain Of Use 3
Used mainly in the home and/or with family, but remains the primary language of these domains for many community members.
3
Transmission
Transmission 1
Most adults in the community, and some children, are speakers.
1
Speakers
Native or fluent speakers:
No results found.
Second-language speakers and learners
No results found.
Semi-speakers or rememberers
No results found.
Children:
No results found.
Young adults
No results found.
Older adults
No results found.
Elders
No results found.
Ethnic or community population
16800 (Wang Dehe 2010)
Year information was gathered
No results found.
Comments on speakers
"Older Ersu speakers (typically above their sixties) are mostly trilingual (Ersu, SW Mandarin, Nuosu). Over the last three decades, most Ersu speakers have been bilingual using SW Mandarin in daily life. The current trend for the school-going generation is to become practically monolingual in Mandarin."
Location and Context
Countries
China
Location Description
Five counties in Sichuan Province in the People’s Republic of China: (i) Ganluo, and (ii) Yuexi counties of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, (iii) Shimian and (iv) Hanyuan counties of Ya’an Municipality, and (iv) Jiulong, brgyad zur county of Ganzi, dkar mdzes Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture
Government Support
no
Institutional Support
no
Speakers' Attitude
neutral to positive
Other Languages Used By The Community
Southwestern Mandarin; Nuosu
Number of Other Language Speakers:
all
Domains of Other Languages:
official domains and daily life
Writing Systems
Standard orthography:
No results found.
Writing system:
Shaba; IPA; roman scripts
Other writing systems used:
No results text.
Comments on writing systems:
"Ersu has its own pictographic writing system, known as shaba (Ersu /ṣàpá/‘ritual priest’) writing, which is chiefly used by Bon priests. In 2014, Chirkova and Wang Dehe developed a Romanization system (see http://wdh51818.blog.163.com/blog/static/418964201532325438373/). It is currently used in Ersu traditional story annotations for ELAR (ELDP) and for the Ersu-Mandarin Dictionary (by Wang & Chirkova, in preparation)."
Recent Resources
Contains lists and comparisons of known phonological sounds utilized in the languages of the classif
includes information about the Ersu-Lizu-Duoxu languages.
Thesis about Ersu grammatical structures, phonological structures, and outline of the various releva