Bradley (2003)

Bradley (2003) lists the following three Lisu dialects.^[4]

• Northern (/lo35 nɛ̠44/, 'Black Lisu' (autonym), /lo35 wu55/, 'Northern Lisu' (name given by other Lisu)): Northwest Yunnan, Kachin State and India
• Central (/ɕɑ̠44 ɕɑ̠44/, Flowery Lisu or Hua Lisu): Western Yunnan, Burma
• Southern (/lo35 ʂɨ33/, 'Yellow Lisu'): extreme Southwestern Yunnan, Shan State of Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam

Mu and Sun (2012)

In their study of Lisu dialects, Mu and Sun (2012) split Lisu into three dialects.^[5]

• Nujiang 怒江方言: 550,000 speakers in Nujiang Prefecture (all counties), Baoshan Prefecture (all counties), Dehong Prefecture (some counties), Lincang Prefecture (some counties), Dali Prefecture (a few counties) and Weixi County
• Luquan 禄劝方言: 65,000 speakers in parts of Chuxiong Prefecture (in Luquan County, Wuding County, etc.) and parts of neighboring prefectures
• Yongsheng 永胜方言: 18,000 speakers in the counties of Yongsheng, Huaping, Panzhihua, Muli, Yanyuan and others

Mu and Sun (2012) compare a total of five datapoints in their comparative vocabulary table.^[5]

• Fugong 福贡: 140,000 speakers in Fugong, Gongshan, Lanping, etc.
• Luquan 禄劝 (autonym: li33 pʰɒ31, Lipo): 45,000+ speakers in Binchuan, Wuding, Yuanmou, Dayao, Yao'an, Yongren, Dechang, Huili, Huidong, Yanyuan, etc.
• Weixi 维西: 100,000+ speakers in Weixi, Deqin, Zhongdian, Lijiang, etc.
• Tengchong 腾冲: 120,000+ speakers in Longling, Dehong Prefecture, Gengma, Simao, Lushui, Shan State (Burma), Chiang Mai (Thailand)
• Yongsheng 永胜: 90,000+ speakers in Yongsheng, Huaping, Ninglang, Dayao, Yongren, Dechang, etc.

Pollard alphabet

Sam Pollard's A-Hmao was adapted to write Lipo, another Lisoish language (sometimes called Eastern Lisu) spoken by the Lisu people.

Fraser alphabet

The Lisu alphabet currently in use throughout Lisu-speaking regions in China, Burma and Thailand was primarily developed by two Protestant missionaries from different missionary organizations. The more famous of the two is James O. Fraser, a British evangelist from the China Inland Mission. His colleague, who developed the original version of the alphabet (later revised and improved with Fraser and various colleagues from the C.I.M.) was Sara Ba Thaw, a polyglot Karen preacher based in Myitkyina, Burma, who belonged to the American Baptist Mission.

Ba Thaw had prepared a simple Lisu catechism by 1915. The script now widely known as the "Fraser alphabet" was finished by 1939, when Fraser's mission houses in the Lisu ethnic areas of Yunnan Province (China) received their newly printed copies of the Lisu New Testament.

Lisu syllabary

Lisu syllabary

From 1924 to 1930, a Lisu farmer named Ngua-ze-bo (pronounced [ŋua˥ze˧bo˦]; Chinese: 汪忍波/哇忍波) invented the Lisu syllabary from Chinese script, Dongba script and Geba script. However, it looks more different from the Chinese script than Chữ Nôm and Sawndip (Zhuang logograms). Since Ngua-ze-bo initially carved his characters on bamboos, the syllabary is known as the Lisu Bamboo script (傈僳竹书).

It has a total of 1250 glyphs and 880 characters.

Latin Lisu alphabet

A new Lisu alphabet based on pinyin was created in 1957, but most Lisu continued to use the old alphabet. The Fraser alphabet was officially recognized by the Chinese government in 1992, since which time its use has been encouraged.

Burmese Lisu script

In a few places in Myanmar in which Lisu is spoken, an orthography based on the Burmese alphabet has been developed and is taught to speakers and used in several publications and school books.

Vowels

[i] and the fricative vowel [ɨ] are in complementary distribution: [ɨ] is only found after palato-alveolars, though an alternate analysis is possible, with the palato-alveolars viewed as allophones of the palatals before [u] and [ɨ].^[6] The distinction originates from proto-Lolo–Burmese consonant clusters of the type *kr or *kj, which elsewhere merge, but where Lisu normally develops /i/, they remain distinct with the latter producing the type [tʃɨ], the former the type [tɕi]. Inherited palatal affricates + /i/ also become [tʃɨ].

In Central Lisu, [i] is heard as a syllabic [z̩] when after alveolar sibilant sounds, and as [ʐ̩] when after retroflex sibilant sounds. /ɑ/ is heard as more fronted [a] when following alveolo-palatal sounds.^[7]

/y/ is variable across dialects. It may be either endolabial or exolabial, central [ʉ] or even merged with /u/. The distinction between ɯ and ɤ is marginal, and both are written ⟨e⟩ in pinyin.

Tones

Lisu has six tones: high [˥], mid creaky [˦ˀ], mid [˧], low [˨˩], rising [˧˥] and low checked [˨˩ʔ] (that is, [tá ta̰ ta tà tǎ tàʔ]). In some dialects the creaky tone is higher than mid tone, in others they are equal. The rising tone is infrequent, but common in baby talk (which has a stereotypical disyllabic low–rising pattern); both high and rising tone are uncommon after voiced consonants.

Consonants

[v] and [w] are in complementary distribution, with [v] before front vowels. /f/ is marginal, occurring in a few words before /u/ or /y/. The subdialect Fraser first encountered also distinguishes a retroflex series, /tʂ tʂʰ dʐ ʂ ʐ/, but only before /ɑ/.

Medial glides appear before /ɑ/. These are /w/ with velars and /j/ with bilabials and /h̃/. The latter consonant (see rhinoglottophilia) has a non-nasal allophone in the imperative particle [hɑ́]. /ɣ/ is only distinctive before /ɑ/ and in some dialects is merged with /j/.

In Central Lisu, /j/ can be heard as an alveolo-palatal [ʑ] when before /i/.^[7] In Southern Lisu, the velar plosives become alveopalatal before front vowels. The vowels /u/ and /e/ trigger an offglide on preceding consonants, so /tu du te de/ are pronounced [tfu dvu tje dje].

The vowels /ɯ ɤ/ do not occur initially—or, at least, in initial position they are pronounced [ɣɯ ɣɤ]. It has been argued that the initial vowels /i e y u ɯ ɤ/ are phonetically [ji je fy fu ɣɯ ɣɤ], so initial consonants do not need to be posited in such cases (and marginal /f/ can be removed from the inventory of native words), or that they are phonemically /ʔV/, with glottal stop.^[4]