Azha () is one of the Loloish languages spoken by the Yi people of China.
Demographics Azha (autonym: or ) is spoken in Ganhe Township of Yanshan County, Yunnan and Dongshan and Binglie Townships of Wenshan County. Pelkey (2011) identifies the Azha 阿扎 (exonym: Pula 朴喇) of Kaiyuan, Yunnan as Phowa speakers.
Azha is spoken by the Phula people, but it is not a Phula language and is a Sani–Azha language, closely related to Sani, Axi and Azhe. Samei of Kunming may be related. Speakers are classified as Yi people by the Chinese Government.
Innovations In Azha, the words for ‘goat’, ‘eat’, and ‘drink’ are innovative (Pelkey 2011:377). Luojiayi AzhaThe representative dialect studied in Pelkey (2011) is that of Luojiayi 倮家邑, Binglie Township 秉烈乡, Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. ‘goat’, ‘eat’, ‘drink’ are not derived from Proto-Ngwi *(k)-citL ‘goat’, *dza² ‘eat’, and *m-daŋ¹ ‘drink’.
References
Pelkey, Jamin. 2011. Dialectology as Dialectic: Interpreting Phula Variation. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.