Reconstruction:Proto-Sino-Tibetan/m/s/g-ljak

Etymology

 * Proto-Sino-Tibetan: *liek (Coblin, 1986)
 * Proto-Tibeto-Burman: *m-lyak ⪤ *s-lyak ⪤ *g-lyak (Matisoff, STEDT); *(m-)lyak ~ (s-)lyak (Benedict, 1972; Weidert, 1987; Coblin, 1986); *m-lyak ⪤ *s-lyak (LaPolla, 1987; Michailovsky, 1991)

Other cognate roots in STEDT:

The words for "to lick" and "tongue" in many languages have similar shapes, compare:
 * Indo-European
 * 🇨🇬: (English, Latin ; the change *dn̥- to l- occured in three branches: Lithuanian, Armenian, Latin)
 * 🇨🇬: (English, Latin )
 * Hmong-Mien
 * 🇨🇬: (Hmong RPA )
 * Tai-Kadai
 * 🇨🇬: (Thai, Lao )
 * 🇨🇬: (Thai, Lao , )
 * Austroasiatic:
 * Vietnamese:, , ,
 * Khmer:
 * Austronesian:
 * 🇨🇬: (Malay )
 * Malay: jilat/dilat ("to lick")
 * Afroasiatic: *lis- ("tongue"), *lVḳ- ("to lick")
 * 🇨🇬: (Arabic, Hebrew )
 * Arabic: ,
 * Hebrew:
 * Kartvelian:
 * 🇨🇬 (Georgian: )

Verb

 * 1) to lick

Noun

 * 1) tongue

Descendants
''Descendants listed hereafter are mainly for words with the sense "to lick" only. Words with the sense "tongue" in daughter languages are mostly cognate to these and can be found at .''
 * Old Chinese:
 * Middle Chinese:, , , , ; ; , ;
 * Middle Chinese:, , , , ; ; , ;
 * Middle Chinese:, , , , ; ; , ;
 * Middle Chinese:, , , , ; ; , ;
 * Middle Chinese:, , , , ; ; , ;
 * Middle Chinese:, , , , ; ; , ;


 * Modern Mandarin
 * Beijing:, , , , (shì, ); ,  (tiǎn, ); ,  (shí, );  (sì, )
 * Cantonese
 * Guangzhou:  (colloquial: );  (literary);,   (colloquial);  (literary); ,  ;
 * Himalayish
 * Tibeto-Kanauri
 * Bodic
 * Tibetan
 * Written
 * Lolo-Burmese-Naxi
 * Lolo-Burmese
 * Burmish
 * Burmic
 * Maruic
 * Pela:
 * Loloish
 * Northern Loloish
 * Yi (Liangshan):
 * (Luangthongkum, 2013)
 * Khomic
 * Khomic
 * Khomic
 * Khomic