Digaro languages

Digaro
Digaro
Northern Mishmi
Geographic; distribution	Arunachal Pradesh
Linguistic classification	possibly Sino-Tibetan or an independent family Greater Siangic ? Digaro; ;
Subdivisions	Idu Mishmi; Taraon;
Glottolog	mish1241

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The Digaro (Digarish), Northern Mishmi (Mishmic), or Kera'a–Tawrã^[1] languages are a small family of possibly Sino-Tibetan languages spoken by the Mishmi people of southeastern Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh.

The languages are Idu and Taraon (Digaro, Darang).

External relationships[edit]

They are not related to the Southern Mishmi Midzu languages, apart from possibly being Sino-Tibetan. However, Blench and Post (2011) suggests that they may not even be Sino-Tibetan, but rather an independent language family of their own.

Blench (2014) classifies the Digaro languages as part of the Greater Siangic group of languages.

Names[edit]

Autonyms and exonyms for Digaro-speaking peoples, as well as Miju (Kaman), are given below (Jiang, et al. 2013:2-3).

Names of Mishmi peoples
	Taraon name	Kaman name	Idu name	Assamese name
Taraon people	da31 raŋ53	tɕi31 moŋ35	tɑ31 rɑŋ35	Digaru; Digaru Mishmi
Kaman people	tɕɑu53	kɯ31 mɑn35	mi31 tɕu55	Midzu
Idu people	dju55; dju55 ta31 rɑŋ53; dɑi53	min31 dɑu55; hu53	i53 du55	Chulikata Mishmi
Zha people 扎人	tɕɑ31 kʰen55	tɕɑ31 kreŋ35	—	—
Tibetan people	lɑ31 mɑ55; mei53 bom55	dɯ31 luŋ35; hɑi35 hɯl55	ɑ31 mi53; pu53; mi31 si55 pu53	—

Registers[edit]

Idu, Tawra, Kman, and Meyor all share a system of multiple language registers, which are (Blench 2016):^[2]

ordinary speech
speech of hunters: lexical substitution, the replacement of animal names and others by special lexical forms, and sometimes short poems
speech of priests/shamans: more complex, involving much language which is difficult to understand, and also lengthy descriptions of sacrificial animals
poetic/lyrical register (not in Idu, but appears in Kman)
mediation register (only in Idu?)
babytalk register

References[edit]

↑ DeLancey, Scott (2021). "Classifying Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan) languages". The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia. De Gruyter. pp. 207–224. doi:10.1515/9783110558142-012. ISBN 9783110558142. S2CID 238722139.
↑ "(PDF) Mishmi language development | Roger Blench - Academia.edu".

Blench, Roger (2011) (De)classifying Arunachal languages: Reconstructing the evidence
Blench, Roger (2014). Fallen leaves blow away: a neo-Hammarstromian approach to Sino-Tibetan classification. Presentation given at the University of New England, Armidale, 6 September 2014.
Blench, Roger. 2017. The ‘Mishmi’ languages, Idu, Tawra and Kman: a mismatch between cultural and linguistic relations.
Jiang Huo [江获], Li Daqin [李大勤], Sun Hongkai [孙宏开] (2013). A study of Taraon [达让语研]. Beijing: Ethnic Publishing House [民族出版社]. ISBN 9787105129324
van Driem, George (2001) Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region. Brill.

Template:Language families Template:Eurasian languages Template:Arunachal languages

[WOL-MSEA-12-1] DeLancey, Scott (2021). "Classifying Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan) languages". The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia. De Gruyter. pp. 207–224. doi:10.1515/9783110558142-012. ISBN 9783110558142. S2CID 238722139.

[2] "(PDF) Mishmi language development | Roger Blench - Academia.edu".

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[2]