On Christian Evangelization’s Influences On The Lisu Language

Religious dissemination usually spells linguistic influences on the languages of the converted. Christianity (Protestantism in particular), a faith adhering to the localization of its liturgical language, has been particularly influential to some ex-non-literary languages around the globe. The Lisu language, which is spoken transnationally by some one million hill folks across China, Myanmar, Thailand and India, is one of the ex-non-literary languages that has been enormously influenced by the Christian evangelization.Based on the extensive fieldwork in the Lisu communities of both China and Thailand, and through two years’ following the Lisu media around the globe, this work aims to examine Christian evangelization’s linguistic effects on the Lisu language in the perspectives of orthography, inter-dialect communication, oral literature transmission (both the positive and negative effects), phonology, lexicon, grammars, pragmatics as well as Lisu’s use.This work consists of seven sections, the preface unveils the value of the research by reviewing the relationship between religions and languages. The preface is also a fact-presentation of the transnational Lisu communities, the Lisu language, the worldwide Lisu churches and the history of the Lisu Scriptures.Chapter one begins with the Fraser Alphabet, the first Lisu orthography named after a Scottish missionary who devised it in the mid-1910s. The chapter proceeds to review three unsuccessful alternatives of the Fraser Alphabet before analyzing why the Fraser Alphabet prevails. Chapter one is concluded with information on the Fraser Alphabet’s current use as well as its digitalization.Chapter two examines Christian evangelization’s influences on Lisu’s inter-dialect communication, the approaches through which Christianity bridges the Lisu dialects and the consequences of that.Chapter three analyzes the phonological, lexical, grammatical changes and the enrichment of pragmatics the Lisu language has undergone due to the influence of Christian evangelization. Chapter four studies Christian evangelization’s two-sided effects on the transmission of the Lisu oral literature, and it details how Christianity has been both a bless and a curse to the Lisu oral literature.Chapter five focuses on how Christianity has extended and vitalized Lisu’s use in the fields of education, inter-ethnic diffusion and media.The epilogue concludes the entire work with four questions concerning Christianity’s positive and negative effects on the Lisu language plus the cultures.