I quote in full Dr. Henry’s extremely interesting account of their language. “The Lolo language is of extreme simplicity, both as regards its phonology and syntax, and its manner of making new words. It belongs to the monosyllabic class of languages, of which Chinese is the most highly developed member. Attempts have been made to deny the primitive monosyllabic nature of the Chinese language, and to consider it as broken down from some pre-existent polysyllabic agglutinative tongue. I am of opinion that a comparative study of Chinese, Lolo, Miao, etc., will establish that this tonal monosyllabic class is primitive, and that we have the vocabularies of these languages’ original roots unchanged. “To illustrate the simplicity of Lolo phonology, I may state that all words are monosyllables, composed of either a vowel or of a consonant followed by a vowel, as A, O, BA, BO, BI, BU. Such combinations as AB, ARD, STO, STAR are impossible. The initial consonants may all be considered simple, though such varieties occur as T and aspirated T, and four sibilants, as S, Z, TS and DZ. There is one apparent exception, namely SL, in SLA, SLO, SLU; but I found that this occurred in another district as THL, showing a certain instability of sound; and further research established that the original sound, still kept in Lolodom, is an aspirated L, so that we have L’O, L’A, L’U. Similar aspirations occur in connexion with T, P, CH, K and NG. “Tones in Lolo are three or four, according to locality. There are no inflections whatsoever, the simple roots being unchangeable. All the words are simple roots, but by simple addition they can be used to express new ideas, thus _gunpowder_ is now called _fire-rice_. I could only find one modification of the simple roots, occurring in four causative verbs, and they are these: DZO, to eat. CHO, to give to eat, to feed. DA, to drink. TA, to give to drink. DU, to go out. TU, to cause to go out. DEH, to wear. TEH, to give to wear. “The syntax is very simple, the place of words in the sentence being the most important factor. Post-positions, personal and demonstrative pronouns, interrogative words, adverbs of time, and a few auxiliary verbs occur; but relatives and conjunctions are absent. Numeral co-efficients are present, as in all the Chinese group of languages and in Malay. We cannot say _two men_, _ten trees_, but must say _man two person_, _tree ten stem_. The plural, tenses of verbs, etc., are rarely expressed, unless absolutely needed; and a Lolo sentence is very suggestive of baby talk. Thus, ‘If he comes I shall not see him,’ is expressed as ‘He come I he not see’; and ‘When he came I did not see him’ as ‘He come that time I not see.’ “I consider that the simple phonology and primitive syntax of the Lolo language are important to study, as we there see a primitive monosyllabic tongue, composed of simple roots, the type by which all languages must have begun.”