Shixing, also rendered Shuhi, is a poorly-attested Qiangic language of Sichuan and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Two-thirds of its speakers are monolingual.

Shixing is also known by its Tibetan name Xumi (旭米 Xùmǐ); it is spoken by about 1800 people living by the Shuiluo River 水洛 in Shuiluo Township 水洛乡, Mili Tibetan Autonomous County.^[2]

Katia Chirkova reports two varieties.^[3]

• Upper Xumi (autonym: ʂuhĩ)
• Lower Xumi (autonym: ʃʉhẽ)

Phonology

Consonants

Xumi features a very unusual phonemic contrast between voiceless /ʎ̥/ and voiced /ʎ/ alveolo-palatal lateral approximants.^[4][5]

In the table above, gold phonemes only appear in the Upper Xumi dialect while blue phonemes only appear in the Lower Xumi dialect. All others appear in both Upper and Lower Xumi.

Vowels

Oral monophthongs of Lower Xumi, from Chirkova & Chen (2013:369)

Oral

• The close and close-mid series are the same in both varieties: /i, ʉ, u, e, o/. The difference lies in the open-mid and open series; in Upper Xumi, these are /ɛ, ɐ, ɔ, a/, whereas in Lower Xumi, they are /ɛ, ɐ, ɑ/.^[8][9]
  • At least in Lower Xumi /ʉ/, is phonetically close-mid [ɵ].^[10]
  • /ɐ/ is closer in Upper Xumi [ɜ]; in addition, the open central vowel /a/ is phonetically near-open [ɐ]. For this reason, they may be transcribed with ⟨ɜ⟩ and ⟨ɐ⟩, respectively.^[11]
  • The Lower Xumi /o/ and /ɑ/ generally correspond to Upper Xumi /u/ and /ɔ/, respectively. /ɑ/ is near-open near-back [ɑ̽] and thus similar to the Upper Xumi /a/, but more back.^[10][11]

Nasal

• Upper Xumi has the following nasal vowels: /ĩ, ũ, ɛ̃, ɔ̃, ɐ̃/, as well as the marginal /ɘ̃/, which occurs only in the word [^LPmɘ̃da]^{[clarification needed]} 'on the roof / upstairs'.^[8]
• Lower Xumi has the following nasal vowels: /ĩ, õ, ɛ̃, ɐ̃, ɑ̃/, as well as the marginal /ə̃/, which occurs only in the word [^LPmə̃dɐ ᴿʁo]^{[clarification needed]} 'on the roof / upstairs'.^[9] /ẽ, õ, ɐ̃, ɑ̃/ generally correspond to Upper Xumi /ĩ, ũ, ɛ̃, ɔ̃/, respectively.^[11]