To collect as many words as possible, Long listened to the accounts of the elders, whom he says can tell stories day and night. The stories are wells from which new words can be drawn for codification.
He learned plant names from herbalists, animal words from hunters and textile terminology from weavers.
Long received 200,000 yuan ($32,020) from a local government cultural affairs body to finish his dictionary.
Tian is still seeking funding.
Tian shares anecdotes about mistakes made when Tujia people apply for IDs. Because many elderly Tujia don't know their names in standard Chinese, they're often registered according to Chinese-character transliterations.
For instance, a Miao person with a surname meaning "stone" (shi in Chinese) was registered with the Chinese character for ya (duck). Tian says such mistakes are common.
Sun points out language study goes beyond preserving tongues to also understanding their origins.
For instance, the language of the Dulong people, who dwell in remote mountainous areas and are known among outsiders for the vanishing tradition of tattooing women's faces, has changed little over a long time.
The Sino-Tibetan language family sub-group spoken by the ethnicity with fewer than 7,000 members, like many other ethnic languages, has no tones. But Putonghua has four. This shows how languages evolved, Sun says.
Sun says many foreign scholars learn standard Chinese and then learn ethnic languages. That's why it's easy to find foreigners in China's ethnic areas.
"Linguistics has no boundaries," Sun says. "China has 30 to 40 minority languages spoken across borders."
And many people, especially those codifying these tongues, hope this remains the case.
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