The Jino language (Jinuo 基諾語;^[4] autonyms: tɕy˦no˦, ki˦ɲo˦) constitutes a pair of Loloish language varieties spoken by the Jino people of Yunnan, China.

In total, there are about 28,320 Jinuo people living in China.^[5] A total of 70–80% of Jinuo people can speak either of the Jino varieties fluently.^[6] The Jino language constitutes the two subdialects of Youle Jino and Buyuan Jinuo,^[7] and they are not mutually intelligible.

Buyuan Jino is spoken by 21,000 people;^[8] most of the speakers are monolingual, which means they only speak Buyuan Jino.^[4] There is no official written form. Most Jino people also speak one of the Tai languages or Chinese. The ISO 639-3 code for the Jino varieties are "jiu" for Youle Jino and "jiy" for Buyuan Jino.^[8] The Glottocodes for the Jino varieties are "youl1235" for Youle Jino^[9] and "buyu1238" for Buyuan Jino.^[10]

The exact classification of Jino within the Loloish branch of Sino-Tibetan language family remains uncertain. Jino is classified as a Southern Loloish (Hanoish) language by Ziwo Lama (2012),^[2] but as a Central Loloish language by Bradley (2007).^[11] Jino is also classified as a Southern Loloish language in Satterthwaite-Phillips' (2011) computational phylogenetic analysis of the Lolo-Burmese languages.^[12]

The use of Jino is rapidly declining: in the 1980s, 70–80% of the Jino people used Jino; in 2000, less than 50% of the population could speak Jino.^[13]

The Jino people were recognized by the state council on 6 June 1979 as the last recognized minority nationality in China.^[13]

Historically, the Jino people were organized as a matriarchal culture, and “Jino” means “descending from the uncle,” and it refers to the importance of mother’s brother in matriarchal societies.^[14]

From a language aspect, Jino is similar to other languages under the branch of the Tibeto-Burman languages, because the Jino people moved from the northwest of Yunnan province to the territories they are at now, but the timing and routes of this migration remain uncertain,^[1]

Jino is spoken in Jinuo Township (Jinuo Mountain), located in Jinghong City of the Sipsongpanna Dai autonomous prefecture of Yunnan province, China.^[13]

There are five tonemes in Buyuan Jino. Gai believes that the function of tonemes are distinguishing lexical meanings and grammatical meanings.^[15]

1. /˥/ (high level tone, 55): it tends to phonetically shorten vowels
2. /˦/ (mid level tone, 44): lower than 55, though still high
3. /˧˩/ (low falling tone, 31)
4. /˧˥/ (rising tone, 35)
5. /˥˧/ (high falling tone, 53)

/˥˧/ (53) tone is considered difficult to distinguish when listening to a native speaker.^[7]

Jino does not have an official writing system, but it developed several systems of signs to cover communication in different situations.^[1] The Jino used engraved wooden or bamboo boards to record debts between villages.