| Katso | |
| Also Known As: | Kazhuo, Khatso |
| States: | China |
| Speakers: | 4,000 |
| Date: | 1997 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Sino-Tibetan |
| Fam2: | Tibeto-Burman |
| Fam3: | Lolo–Burmese |
| Fam4: | Loloish |
| Fam5: | Kazhuoish[1] |
| Iso3: | kaf |
| Glotto: | kats1235 |
| Glottorefname: | Katso²l |
Katso, also known as Kazhuo or Khatso (autonyms: pronounced as /kʰɑ⁵⁵tso³¹/, pronounced as /kɑ⁵⁵tso³¹/;), is a Loloish language of Xingmeng Township (兴蒙乡), 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 pronounced as /kʰɑ⁵⁵tso³¹/ (卡卓) or pronounced as /kɑ⁵⁵tso³¹/ (嘎卓) (Kazhuoyu Yanjiu).
Katso is young, being no older than 750 years old.[2] Lama (2012) lists the following sound changes from Proto-Loloish as Kazhuoish innovations.
The consonants for Katso according to Donlay (2019) are as follows:
| Labial | Alveolar | (Alveolo-)Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Stop/Affricate | unvoiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| aspirated | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Fricative | unvoiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Approximant | voiced | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
Katso does not exhibit certain vowel qualities common in other Loloish languages like nasal vowels or the laryngeally-constricted vowels found in Nuosu.
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | ||||
| Syllabic Consonant | z̩ v̩ | ||||
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | ɯ | |||
| Mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Low | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
Donlay identifies 8 diphthongs, /iɛ ia io ɛi uo ua ui au/ and two triphthongs /iau uɛi 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.