Northern Qiang is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Qiangic branch, more specifically falling under the Tibeto-Burman family.

It is spoken by approximately 60,000 people in East Tibet, and in north-central Sichuan Province, China.

Northern Qiang is composed of several different dialects, many of which are easily mutually intelligible.

The Luhua, Mawo, Zhimulin, and Weigu varieties of Northern Qiang are spoken by the Heishui Tibetans.

[2] Sims (2016)[3] characterizes Northern (Upstream) Qiang as the *nu- innovation group.

The phonemic inventory of the Northern Qiang of Ronghong village consists of 37 consonants, and eight basic vowel qualities.

Diphthongs: ia, iɑ, ie, ye, eu, əu, ei, əi, oi, uɑ, ua, uə, ue, ui, ya Triphthong: uəi[4]: 26 As the Northern Qiang language becomes more endangered, the use of r-coloring is not being passed down to younger generations of the Northern Qiang people.

These do not preserve Proto-Tibeto-Burman finals, which have all been lost, but are the result of the reduction of unstressed syllables (e.g. [səf] 'tree' from /sə/ 'wood' + /pʰə/ 'forest').

When a compound or a directional prefix is added before an aspirated initial, the latter becomes the final of the preceding syllable in the new word.

Northern Qiang uses affixes in the form of prefixes and suffixes to describe or modify the meaning of nouns and verbs.

clause + Noun + ADJ + DEM/DEF + (NUM + CL)/PL[4]: 39 Gender marking only occurs in animals.

[4]: 99–100 qɑ-tɕ1sg-GENləɣzbookqɑ-tɕ ləɣz1sg-GEN book'my book'[4]: 100 The meaning of verbs can be changed using prefixes and suffixes, or by using reduplication.

[4]: 59, 223 tɑwə-tɑ-mhat-wear-NOMle-zeDEF-CLtɑwə-tɑ-m le-zehat-wear-NOM DEF-CL'the person wearing a hat'[4]: 224 The Northern Qiang language has quite a predictable syntax without many variations.

[4]: 222 As shown from the order stated above, Northern Qiang is a language with a SOV sentence structure.