Ersu languages are spoken by about 20,000 people in China as reported by Sun (1982).

Ersuic speakers live in the western part of China's Sichuan province (several counties within the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, and the prefecture-level city of Ya'an).

The Ersu Shaba script of the shābā religious books is a pictographic system of proto-writing.

The system, in which the color of the characters has an effect on the meaning, was inspired by Chinese writing and was created in the 11th century.

[3] Yu (2012) classifies Ersu languages as follows, with defining innovations given in parentheses.