She

The She language (Mandarin: 畲語, Shēyǔ, Hakka 山客話, san ha ue, ), autonym Ho Le or Ho Ne, or Ho Nte, is a critically endangered Hmong–Mien language spoken by the She people. Most of the over 709,000 She people today speak Shehua (probably a variety of Hakka Chinese). Those who speak Sheyu—approximately 1,200 individuals in Guangdong Province—call themselves Ho Ne, "mountain people". Names Speakers refer to themselves as Ho Le (lit. 'mountain people'), as She is the Chinese exonym. Only the Huidong dialect has Ho Ne, while the Boluo, Haifeng, and Zengcheng dialects all use Ho Le as their autonym. Dialects There are two main dialects of She, both of which are highly endangered. They are spoken in two small pockets to the west and east of Huizhou City, Guangdong. Luofu 罗浮 (Western She dialect), spoken in Luofu Mountain District 罗浮山区, Boluo County and in Zengcheng District. 580 speakers according to Ethnologue. Lianhua 莲花 (Eastern She dialect), spoken in Lianhua Mountain District 莲花山区, Haifeng County. 390 speakers according to Ethnologue. External relationships She has been difficult to classify due to the heavy influence of Chinese on the language. Matisoff (2001), for example, left it unclassified within the Hmongic languages, and some have considered that much to be doubtful, leaving it unclassified within (and potentially a third branch of) the Hmong–Mien languages. She has monosyllabic roots, but has mainly compound words. However, due to the similar components of She, Mao & Li (2002) and Ratliff (2010) consider She to be most closely related to Jiongnai.