Hani language

The Hani language (Hani: Haqniqdoq or xa31 ɲi31; simplified Chinese: 哈尼语; traditional Chinese: 哈尼語; pinyin: Hāníyǔ; Vietnamese: Tiếng Hà Nhì) is a language of the Loloish (Yi) branch of the Tibeto-Burman linguistic group spoken in China, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam by the Hani people.

In China, Hani is spoken mostly in areas to the east of the Mekong River in south-central Yunnan province, mostly in Pu'er and Honghe prefectures, as well as in parts of other surrounding prefectures.

Edmondson (2002) reports that the Hani of Vietnam are distributed in two provinces of northwestern Vietnam where two distinct dialects are found, one east of Muong Te and the other to the west.

In China, Standard Hani, which is based on the Lüchun County dialect, is written using a Latin-based script developed by the Chinese government during the 1950s.

As with the Latin-based scripts of the Zhuang, Hmong and Iu Mien languages, it uses final consonant letters to represent tone.