Luren (卢人), Liuezi, Lujia or Lu is the extinct Sino-Tibetan language of the Luren who live in Guizhou, China. The Luren language may have been extinct since the 1960sGuizhou Province Gazetteer: Ethnic Gazetteer [贵州省志. 民族志] (2002). Guiyang: Guizhou Ethnic Publishing House [貴州民族出版社]. when many Luren assimilated into a local Manchu community, leading to all Luren being misclassified as Manchu by the Chinese government. Luren is most closely related to other Ta-Li languages.Hölzl, Andreas. 2021. Longjia (China) - Language Contexts. Language Documentation and Description 20, 13-34. The Luren language only has a few hundred attested words, toponyms and personal names and is understudied.
The clasification of the Ta-Li languages within the Sino-Tibetan language family is highly disputed. For example Zhengzhang (2010) suggests that Caijia and Bai form a Macro-Bai branch,Zhèngzhāng Shàngfāng [郑张尚芳]. 2010. Càijiāhuà Báiyǔ guānxì jí cígēn bǐjiào [蔡家话白语关系及词根比较]. In Pān Wǔyún and Shěn Zhōngwěi [潘悟云、沈钟伟] (eds.). Yánjūzhī Lè, The Joy of Research [研究之乐-庆祝王士元先生七十五寿辰学术论文集], II, 389–400. Shanghai: Shanghai Educational Publishing House. while Sagart argues that Caijia and Waxiang represent an early split from Old Chinese.Sagart, Laurent. 2011. Classifying Chinese dialects/Sinitic languages on shared innovations. Talk given at Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l’Asie orientale, Norgent sur Marne.
The Luren mostly live in northwest Guìzhōu 贵州 province, including Qiánxī 黔西, Jīnshā 金沙, or Dàfāng 大方 counties and the prefecture-level city Bìjié 毕节. In Dafang County, the Luren are located in Huangni 黄泥乡, Dashui 大水乡, Gamu 嘎木乡, and Shachang 纱厂镇 townships (Dafang County Gazetteer 1996:157).
Proposed Split Andreas Holzl argues that the six attested wordlists for the Luren languages could include two unrelated languages. The first he calls Luren A or Lujia which is a Ta-Li language as Luren is traditionally classified. The second he terms Luren B or Jinshaic which seems to be unrelated to the Kra-Dai, Sino-Tibetan, Hmong-Mien and Austroasiatic language families thus may be a language isolate. Luren B has only a few terms that are variously similar to Ta-Li, Sino-Tibetan and Kra-Dai languages but most words seemingly have no clear plausible relatives.
Andrea Holzi also mentions the Luren of Dafang county, who have an oral tradition of a third language called Yíyu Daozhuang. It supposedly used their native grammar, but most of the words belonged to the previously hegemonic Nasu language.
See also Macro-Bai comparative vocabulary list (Wiktionary)
References
Further reading Guizhou provincial ethnic classification commission, linguistic division [贵州省民族识别工作队语言组]. 1982. The language of the Caijia [Caijia de yuyan 蔡家的语言]. m.s. Guizhou provincial ethnic classification commission [贵州省民族识别工作队]. 1984. Report on ethnic classification issues of the Nanlong people (Nanjing-Longjia) [南龙人（南京-龙家）族别问题调查报告]. m.s. Hsiu, Andrew. 2013. "New endangered Tibeto-Burman languages of southwestern China: Mondzish, Longjia, Pherbu, and others". Presentation given at ICSTLL 46, Dartmouth College. Zhao Weifeng [赵卫峰]. 2011. History of the Bai people of Guizhou [贵州白族史略]. Yinchuan, China: Ningxia People's Press [宁夏人民出版社]. Hölzl, Andreas. 2021. The Lu(ren) language of Guizhou, China. Paper presented at 9th International Contrastive Linguistics Conference (ICLC 9), Santa Margherita-Portofino. (Online Meeting.)