Reconstruction:Proto-Sino-Tibetan/g-rjum

Etymology

 * Proto-Sino-Tibetan: *gryam (Coblin, 1986), *gyam(ʔ) (Chou, 1972)
 * Proto-Tibeto-Burman: *g-ryum, *gryum (Matisoff, STEDT; Benedict, 1972; Chou, 1972; LaPolla, 1987)



Root

 * 1) salt; salty, salted; to salt

Descendants

 * Old Chinese: ; ;
 * Note: Vowels of the two above did not match in MC, and some (e.g. Schuessler) have therefore treated them as unrelated. Here that possibility is considered unlikely, hence treated as doublets.
 * Middle Chinese:, ,


 * Modern Mandarin
 * Beijing: (yán,, "salt"; yàn, , "to salt"), ,  (yān, , "to salt"),  (xián, , "salty")
 * Himalayish
 * Tibeto-Kanauri
 * Bodic
 * Tibetan
 * Written (Benedict (1972) considered this to be a loanword from Old Chinese)
 * Mahakiranti
 * Kiranti
 * Eastern Kiranti = Rai
 * Jingpho-Nung-Asakian
 * Jingpho
 * Jingpho [Kachin]:
 * Lolo-Burmese-Naxi
 * Lolo-Burmese
 * Burmish
 * (whence )
 * Lolo-Burmese
 * Burmish
 * (whence )