Speakers of Akha live in remote mountainous areas where it has developed into a wide-ranging dialect continuum.
The isolated nature of Akha communities has also resulted in several villages with divergent dialects.
With a population of 400 it was, at the time, one of the largest Akha villages in Northern Thailand and was still growing as a result of cross-border migration from Burma.
The Akha in Alu spoke no Standard Thai and communicated with outsiders using either Lahu Na or Shan.
[9] In interrogative sentences, má or mɛ́ is used for confirmation; the same particles in the answer express information that the speaker knows for sure.
The table below lists the Akha varieties surveyed in Kingsada (1999), Shintani (2001), and Kato (2008), with autonyms and informant birthplaces given as well.
Akha Chicho, spoken in Ban Pasang village, Muang Sing district, Luang Namtha Province, is documented in Hayashi (2018).
Nearby, Akha Kopien (also known as Botche) is spoken in another part of Muang Sing District, Luang Namtha Province, Laos.
[12] In Jinghong City and Menghai County, the two major Hani subgroups are Jiuwei 鸠为 and Jizuo 吉坐.
The Jiuwei live in various villages in Jinghong, including: There are also ethnic Hani that are locally called Aini 爱尼 living in 7 villages on Nanlin Mountain 南林山 of southwestern Jinghong, namely Manbage 曼八阁, Manjinglong 曼景龙, Manjingnan 曼景囡, Mangudu 曼固独, Manbaqi 曼把奇, Manbasan 曼巴伞, and Manjingmai 曼景卖.